Printed dedication of the author's book to Charles Darwin in volume 1. Alfred Russel Wallace (born January 8, 1823, Usk, Monmouthshire, Wales, died November 7, 1913, Broadstone, Dorset, England) was a British humanist, naturalist, geographer, and social critic. He became a public figure in England during the second half of the 19th century, known for his courageous views on scientific, social, and spiritualist subjects. His formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection, which predated Charles Darwin's published contributions, is his outstanding legacy, but it was just one of many controversial issues he studied and wrote about during his lifetime. (...) Wallace published a highly successful narrative of his journey, The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan, and the Bird of Paradise (1869), and wrote Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870). In the latter volume and in several articles from this period on human evolution and spiritualism, Wallace parted from the scientific naturalism of many of his friends and colleagues in claiming that natural selection could not account for the higher faculties of human beings. Complete with all the maps and illustrations