<P> Darwin now worked on an "abstract" trimmed from his Natural Selection manuscript . The publisher John Murray agreed the title as On the Origin of Species through Natural Selection and the book went on sale to the trade on 22 November 1859 . The stock of 1,250 copies was oversubscribed, and Darwin, still at Ilkley spa town, began corrections for a second edition . The novelist Charles Kingsley, a Christian socialist country rector, sent him a letter of praise: "It awes me...if you be right I must give up much that I have believed", it was "just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal forms capable of self development...as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas which he himself had made ." Darwin added these lines to the last chapter, with attribution to "a celebrated author and divine". </P> <P> The reviewers were less encouraging . Four days before publication, a review in the authoritative Athenaeum (by John Leifchild, published anonymously, as was the custom at that time) was quick to pick out the unstated implications of "men from monkeys" already controversial from Vestiges, saw snubs to theologians, summing up Darwin's "creed" as man "was born yesterday--he will perish tomorrow" and concluded that "The work deserves attention, and will, we have no doubt, meet with it . Scientific naturalists will take up the author upon his own peculiar ground; and there will we imagine be a severe struggle for at least theoretical existence . Theologians will say--and they have a right to be heard--Why construct another elaborate theory to exclude Deity from renewed acts of creation? Why not at once admit that new species were introduced by the Creative energy of the Omnipotent? Why not accept direct interference, rather than evolutions of law, and needlessly indirect or remote action? Having introduced the author and his work, we must leave them to the mercies of the Divinity Hall, the College, the Lecture Room, and the Museum ." At Ilkley, Darwin raged "But the manner in which he drags in immortality, & sets the Priests at me, & leaves me to their mercies, is base . He would on no account burn me; but he will get the wood ready and tell the black beasts how to catch me ." Darwin sprained an ankle and his health worsened, as he wrote to friends it was "odious". </P> <P> By 9 December when Darwin left Ilkley to come home, he had been told that Murray was organising a second run of 3,000 copies . Hooker had been "converted", Lyell was "absolutely gloating" and Huxley wrote "with such tremendous praise", advising that he was sharpening his "beak and claws" to disembowel "the curs who will bark and yelp". </P> <P> Richard Owen had been the first to respond to the complimentary copies, courteously claiming that he had long believed that "existing influences" were responsible for the "ordained" birth of species . Darwin now had long talks with him, and told Lyell that "Under garb of great civility, he was inclined to be most bitter & sneering against me . Yet I infer from several expressions, that at bottom he goes immense way with us ." Owen was furious at being included among those defending immutability of species, and in effect said that the book offered the best explanation "ever published of the manner of formation of species", though he did not agree with it in all respects . He still had the gravest doubts that transmutation would bestialise man . It appears that Darwin had assured Owen that he was looking at everything as resulting from designed laws, which Owen interpreted as showing a shared belief in "Creative Power". </P>

What was an initial scientific criticism of on the origin of species