Charles Darwin autograph manuscript could fetch £700,000 at auction

The manuscript will be sold at an auction in November.

The document is said to be the most significant autograph manuscript by Darwin to have ever been sold.

On the Origin of Species was voted the most influential academic book of all time in a public poll.

Some of Darwin's notes and manuscript leaves can still be found 163 years later. Darwin's autographs were very rare.

The manuscript was mistakenly thought to be a leaf from the third edition of On the Origin of Species.

Four years after the publication of the third edition of Origin of Species, Darwin wrote it in response to a request from the editor of the autographic mirror. Kindt requested a sample of Darwin's handwriting to be used in his magazine, which focused on the pre-eminent figures of the age, according to the auction house.

The manuscript leaf was given to him by Darwin. The auction house said it was a gesture from a man with notoriously inscrutable handwriting who often signed his name in abbreviated letters.

It would be difficult to overstate the impact Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species had on science and culture in the 19th century.

The most significant autograph manuscript by Darwin will come to auction, continuing the longstanding track record of offering the most important documents and artifacts in the history of thought.

A first edition of On the Origin of Species and a rare copy of On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties will be included in the auction.

There will be an online Age of Wonder auction from November to December.