It is sometimes easy to tell when a book has been a labor of love for an author. Charles Morris Lansley's Charles Darwin's Debt to the Romantics: How Alexander von Humboldt, Goethe and Wordsworth Helped Shape Darwin's View of Nature is such a book. Lansley's fascination with Darwin's works and ideas is evident on every page, as he places this Victorian scientist both in the context of his era and in relation to various literary and scientific writers of previous generations. Although Humboldt, Goethe, and Wordsworth are included in the book's title, many other writers, such as Coleridge, Blake, Percy Shelley, Schlegel, Schelling, and of course Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, also receive attention or comparison as Lansley traces their possible influences on Charles Darwin's experiences and oeuvre. The book is composed of an introduction and nine chapters that adhere more to a thematic, rather than chronological, structure.

In the introduction, Lansley aims to define what is meant by “Romantic,” and he recounts critical perspectives from well-known literary scholars who have discussed Darwin's works in imaginative contexts, such as Gillian Beer and George Levine. He explains that the book examines Darwin's principal works, including The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), On the Origin of Species (1859), The Descent of Man (1871), and his Notebooks (1836–1844), and he briefly touches on Darwin's theories that receive further exploration in subsequent chapters. Chapter 1 analyzes Humboldt's “Organic Nature” as a possible influence on Darwin's later notion of a “web of affinities” (19). As Lansley delineates, the “Humboldtian Method” broke with earlier Linnaean approaches to nature, instead viewing diversity as underlying the “unity of Nature” through the blending of “science with aesthetic sensitivity” (20, 21). Lansley connects some of Humboldt's thoughts about species development and migration with Darwin's views regarding natural selection. Humboldt also modeled for Darwin the merits of “first-hand experience of the forces of Nature, despite its dangers” (24). Humboldt's “unifying interconnectedness of Nature,” or “cosmos,” is what we now call ecology (28). Through this influence, “Darwin's presentation of causes and effects seen in Nature can be interpreted as coming from within Nature rather than being caused by a divine Creator” (30). Lansley then discusses ways in which the idea of unity in nature had also been explored by poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Chapter 2 focuses on ways in which the “forces of Nature” developed “both Humboldt and Darwin's aesthetic imagination” and “led to their belief that all of mankind are born equal” (51). Lansley explains that both “Humboldt and Darwin abhorred slavery,” but elsewhere in the book he also touches on Darwin's prejudices and misogynistic views (55). The third chapter discusses the influence of German Romantics, especially Goethe and Schelling, on Humboldt, and thereby on Darwin. Lansley notes here Darwin's indebtedness to Humboldt's Personal Narrative and quotes Darwin's praise of Humboldt's descriptions as achieving “the rare union of poetry and science” (69). Nevertheless, I wished that Lansley had mentioned here that Darwin's copy of Humboldt's Personal Narrative had been translated by the Romantic-era poet, Helen Maria Williams, and, as other scholars have shown, much of the “poetry” that Darwin appreciated in Humboldt's text could actually be attributed to Williams.

Chapter 4 examines how Darwin's “theory of Mind” was influenced by Romantic-era thinkers, such as Goethe (81). Goethe's notion of archetypes and theory of morphology find echoes in Darwin's work. Here, Lansley analyzes Goethe's poem, “The Metamorphosis of Plants,” noting similarities with Darwin, but also stating, “for Goethe the force of Nature was the sum total of eternal archetypes seeking development towards their perfection,” while “Darwin's force of Nature was natural selection” (103). The fifth chapter examines “reflection” and “imagination” in relation to Darwin's concept of moral reflection, or the ability to tell right from wrong, build communities, and feel sympathy (119). According to Darwin, there are different layers of consciousness, or “double consciousness,” that separate the self or will from imagination and that may have been influenced by Coleridge's own conception of consciousness (129).

Chapter 6 questions whether Darwin should be categorized, in broad terms, as a Romantic or a Victorian, or both, and settles on this last possibility. If I had to make a general criticism of this book, it would be about Lansley's very insistence on defining eras in the way that is highlighted within this chapter. Throughout the book, he seeks to find ways to justify labeling Darwin's ideas as “Romantic,” but in doing so, he relies on what often feel like stereotypes of the eras themselves, leading to a sense of oversimplification. Instead, Lansley is at his best when he closely analyzes and compares individual writers, engaging with the full complexity of their theories, ideas, and methods.

Chapter 7 compares Darwin's earlier writings in Voyage of the Beagle and the Beagle notebooks with his later expressions in Origin and Descent to chart the changes in his language and thought over the course of his career. For Lansley, the “narrative of Darwin's works reveals not only the development of Man's Mind from simple beginnings, but also the development of Darwin's Mind alongside that of the reader's,” which then receives comparison with Wordsworth's poetic methods (191). The eighth chapter examines Erasmus Darwin's “vitalistic conception of materiality” in its similarities with Charles Darwin's “own brand of Romantic materialism” (221). Although, unlike Charles, Erasmus believed in the transmigration of spirits, both Darwins recognized the importance of industrialization for human progress and the importance of sympathy for humanity.

Concluding the book, chapter nine conveys a lovely tribute to Charles Darwin's legacy by examining the poems of his great-great granddaughter, Ruth Padel, in her Darwin: A Life in Poems (2010), which contains references to Romantic-era poetry, telling “the story of his life but also the story of time” (240). On the whole, Lansley's book offers a useful guide to the imaginative and poetic aspects of the life and writings of one of history's most renowned scientific thinkers.