Erasmus Darwin was an English physician and an important figure in the Midlands Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Holding a deep interest in the natural world, he wrote several poems on the subject and established a Botanical Society at Lichfield (see RCIN 1090547) to translate the works of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus.

The Temple of Nature was Darwin’s last great work, published posthumously in 1803. Subtitled The Origin of Society, the poem is an early work on evolution and builds upon ideas on the origins of life and survival of the fittest that were first alluded to in his poem The Loves of Plants in 1789 (see RCIN 1057435) and hypothesised in his scientific work Zoonomia (1794-6, RCINs 1090396-7).

While never forming a definitive theory, Darwin’s ideas introduced concepts for which his grandson Charles Darwin would become celebrated following the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.