On the Origin of Species the manuscript for his "big book" on Species, "Natural Selection". By mid March 1859 Darwin's abstract had reached the stage where he was thinking of early publication; Lyell suggested the publisher John Murray, and met with him to find if he would be willing to publish. On 28 March Darwin wrote to Lyell asking about progress, and offering to give Murray assurances "that my Book is not more "un"-orthodox, than the subject makes inevitable." He enclosed a draft title sheet proposing "An abstract of an Essay on the Origin of Species and Varieties Through natural selection", with the year shown
On the Origin of Species deal with counter-arguments raised. The third edition came out in 1861, with a number of sentences rewritten or added and an introductory appendix, "An Historical Sketch of the Recent Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species", while the fourth in 1866 had further revisions. The fifth edition, published on 10 February 1869, incorporated more changes and for the first time included the phrase "survival of the fittest", which had been coined by the philosopher Herbert Spencer in his "Principles of Biology" (1864). In January 1871, George Jackson Mivart's "On the Genesis of Species" listed detailed arguments against natural selection,