Charles Darwin's most famous work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859), established the scientific basis for understanding the evolution of organic life. Yet as Darwin claimed in his autobiography, the determining event of his career was his journey as naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. The record of his travels appeared first as the third volume of Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle (1839). Darwin's Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle was republished separately that same year, revised in 1845, and subsequently published in more than 159 editions in English. It has also been translated into twenty-two languages.

Darwin's voyage provided him with data for three other treatises on geological phenomena, and in both its form...