Condition Continued: And beside the remarkable fact of Ms. Daliba's signature, no one has written their name or anything else anywhere. Illustrated from engravings, all in very good shape.

D. Appleton And Company, New York, 1863. Hardcover. Written by Thomas H. Huxley. Probable First American Edition (1863 on title page, 8 pages of ads at rear). I purchased this book in Redding, Connecticut, from a great-grandchild of Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was in a group of books that had once been owned by Hawthorne's son, Julian (this book does not contain his signature, but I've just listed one that does--Sketches From Life, 1846-- and will soon be listing a couple of others that also have his ownership signature). It's possible that the book originated in Nathaniel Hawthorne's library, although it was published only a year before his death in 1864. At some point in time it fell into the hands of a Gerda Dalliba who signed her name on the first front end paper (the end papers are not original to the book). I am confident that this is the same Gerda Dalliba who in 1902, at the age of 17, wrote a  book (published by Grafton Press) titled Fate and I and Other Poems, and in 1908 another book published by G. P. Putnam titled An Earth Poem and Other Poems with an Introduction by Edwin Markham, who served as the Poet Laureate of Oregon from 1923 to 1931. His introduction ended with the words 'The lines I have quoted show the wild energy of this poet's work. But even better work will yet come from the pen of this brilliant woman; for she has imagination, color, fire and youth!' Sadly, Gerda Dalliba died in 1913 at the age of 28. Here' an interesting tie-in, from an article by Cyril Clemens titled 'Dinner with Edwin Markham' (Cyril Clemens was a cousin of Mark Twain's, bringing us back again to Redding, Connecticut where Twain lived): Clemens asked Markham if he had known the late Julian Hawthorne. Markham answered 'Yes, I knew him. Hawthorne was one of the first to write me when 'My Man with the Hoe' appeared. It encouraged me much to hear from the son of the great Nathaniel whose work I had enjoyed and pondered over on an Idaho farm.' So you have the connection between Julian Hawthorne and Edwin Markham who has a close connection to the poet Gerda Dalliba. Information on Ms. Dalliba is difficult to find. Try googling 'Fate and I and Other Poems by Gerda Dalliba died in 1913' and click on the e-book link (you'll find many examples of her writing as well as Mr. Markham's touching tribute to her in a volume of her work published by her mother in 1921). Of the few original copies of  Ms. Dalliba's books for sale on the Internet, none are signed. So, in this 1863 copy of Evidence As to Mans Place in Nature likely lies the only signature of the young poet Gerda Dalliba. 

'Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature is an 1863 book by Thomas Henry Huxley, in which he gives evidence for the evolution of humans and apes from a common ancestor. It was the first book devoted to the topic of human evolution, and discussed much of the anatomical and other evidence. Backed by this evidence, the book proposed that evolution applied as fully to man as to all other life.

The book came five years after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace announced their theory of evolution by means of natural selection, and four years after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. In the Origin Darwin had deliberately avoided tackling human evolution.'