Rare Darwin book predicted to fetch £60,000 at auction

The copy coming up for sale is particularly valuable because it is signed by one of Darwin's closest friends, the distinguished botanist and explorer Joseph Dalton Hooker.

It was presented by Hooker to his uncle, Norfolk parson, the Reverend John Gunn.

When the book was first published on November 24, 1859, it cost 15 shillings or 75p in modern money.

Only 1,250 copies were produced for the first edition and these copies are now much sought-after by collectors.

The book is signed "To Revd Gunn, from his affect. nephew, JDH , Kew, Dec 5/59".

The copy will be sold at an auction at Bonhams in London on March 25.

Auctioneers describe the book as "a magnificent association copy".

A spokesman for Bonhams said: "Joseph Hooker was one of Darwin's closest friends, their correspondence comprising some 1,400 letters.

"Their close personal relations were cemented in 1851 when Hooker married Frances, eldest daughter of John Stevens Henslow, the Cambridge professor of botany, who had inspired Darwin when he had arrived at the university in 1828."

Darwin was born at The Mount in Shrewsbury on February 12, 1809.

He was the fifth child and second son of Robert Waring Darwin, Shrewsbury's principal physician.

In January a rare first edition of On the Origin of Species sold for £26,000.

The book, initially valued between £15,000 and £25,000, was sold from Lady Mary Stewart's library at Lyon & Turnbull's Edinburgh auction rooms.

At Sotheby's in New York on April 26, 2005, a page from the original manuscript of On the Origin of Species, in Darwin's own hand, sold for £143,164, making it the most valuable piece of writing by any Shropshire-born author. And a first edition copy of the book sold for £69,070.

The book, published in 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.