Despite his unique contribution to evolutionary theory, the mechanism of natural selection, Charles Darwin can hardly be considered the first evolutionary theorist in history. It is generally acknowledged that organic evolution, or ’transmutation’ as it was called during his lifetime, was hardly a new idea when Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 … In fact, Darwin not only followed closely behind other transmutation theorists, but his own views met with a degree of skepticism not altogether unlike that which greeted his predecessors. As James Secord notes, the scientific consensus regarding natural selection “is a twentieth-century creation” and the “centrality given to Darwin” is also a recent phenomenon (Intro. to Vestiges x). As historians of science have begun to dismantle the ’all-roads-lead-to-Darwin’ consensus (Secord, Intro. to Vestiges x) by exploring its social, cultural and even ideological contingencies, an exploration of the evolutionary roads not taken promises to be an important and illuminating venture. Published on The Victorian Web. December 2008. Click here or on title.