This book, by Darwin's most celebrated modern biographers, gives a completely new explanation of why he came to his shattering theories about human origins. Until now, Desmond and Moore argue, the source of the moral fire which gives such intensity and urgency to Darwin's ideas has gone unnoticed. By examining minutely Darwin's manuscripts and correspondence (published and unpublished) and covert notebooks, where many of the clues lie, they show that the key to unlocking the mystery of how such an ostensibly conservative man could hold views which his contemporaries considered both radical and bestial, lay in his utter detestation of slavery. Darwin's Sacred Cause will be one of the major contributions to the worldwide Darwin anniversary celebrations in 2009.

Adrian Desmond

Adrian Desmond studied at London University and Harvard, has higher degrees in vertebrate palaeontology and the history of science, and a Ph.D. for his work on Victorian evolution. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Biology Department at University College London.

Adrian Desmond's bestselling Darwin (Penguin, 1992, written with James Moore), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in Britain, the Grand Comisso Prize in Italy and the Watson Davis Prize from the History of Science Society in America. In 1997 the British Society for the History of Science awarded it the first Dingle Prize for the best book of the decade in communicating the history of science to a wide audience. His study of the pre-Darwinian generation, The Politics of Evolution (1989), received the Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society. He has also published The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs (1975), The Ape's Reflexion (1979) and Archetypes and Ancestors (1982). In 1993 the Society for the History of Natural History awarded him its Founders' Medal.

The first volume of Adrian Desmond's biography, Huxley: The Devil's Disciple, was originally published in 1994 and the second Huxley: Evolution's High Priest, in 1997. Together these were declared Top Biography in 1997 by Philip Ziegler in the Daily Telegraph and picked by the New York Times as one of the best books of the year. This is the first British publication of both parts in a single volume edition.

Adrian Desmond is currently editing (with Angela Darwin, T.H. Huxley's great granddaughter) a four volume collection of The T. H. Huxley Family Correspondence, to begin publication in 2000.

James A. Moore

James Moore is a reader in history of science and technology at the Open University.