Mr. Darwin's Shooter


Mr Darwin's Shooter is a 1998 novel by Roger McDonald. It describes the life of Syms Covington, manservant to Charles Darwin during Darwin's voyage aboard HMS Beagle.
The book deals with three periods of Covington's life: childhood, adolescence while on, and middle age, where Covington is struggling to deal with the conflict between his religious views and his role in the formulation of the theory of natural selection. Among the many animals Syms Covington shot and prepared for Charles Darwin were the Galápagos finches, which became crucial for his theory.

Publication history

After the novel's initial publication by Random House Australia in 1998 it was republished as follows:
The novel was also translated into Spanish, in 2001 and German in 2002.

Awards and nominations