Darwin's influence in American literature is vaguely assumed but largely unknown. Yet it was immediate, profound, and long-lasting. Most readers would acknowledge that the Origin of Species initiated "the greatest of all scientific revolutions," and that Darwin has dominated the study of human nature over the last 135 years.
Thus, as one might expect, several fine books (over several decades) have examined the literary response to Darwin in British fiction from 1860 on into the twentieth century. But there is only a single, slim pamphlet on Darwin in American fiction. Discussions of American literary realism especially those published during the last twenty years often do not mention Darwin at all; and when they do it is to suggest, very briefly, that his thought was only faintly influential in the 1870s and 1880s.
Our literary histories suggest that only the naturalists' work around the turn of the century reflects any compelling interest in Darwinian thought, and this is usually discussed in a very general way in the context of "social Darwinism." Building then on the literary histories, the broader studies of Darwinism in American culture in general have included chapters on some of the naturalists from around the 1890s, leaving the impression that somehow the literary import of Darwinian thought had been lost or perhaps stormbound for a quarter century in the Atlantic crossing. (John Beer, 1998)
Darwin had written briefly of sexual selection in the Origin of Species, explaining that "this form of selection depends, not on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external conditions, but on a struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex. The result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring". But while sexual selection is......
