This work examines text as cultural force. It specifically discusses the thematic potency of Evolution as the evolutionary topics of the Darwin and the post Darwin generation increasingly found their way into popular discourse and popular culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. Both Britain and America were (and to an interesting degree, still are)the center of a series of debates about evolutionary development of life. Unlike Appleman’s critical edition of Darwin (now in 3/E) this collection emphasizes literary and popular responses using original material and debates. It is particularly strong in examining newspaper accounts of the revolutionary findings of biology and the cultural shifts that occurred as evolutionary thought influenced literature and popular taste.