Elliott & Thompson acquires Howard’s ‘ambitious' work on animal eggs

Elliott & Thompson has acquired Infinite Life: A Revolutionary Story of Eggs, Evolution and Life on Earth, an ambitious new work by zoologist Jules Howard.

Publishing director Sarah Rigby acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Laura Macdougall at United Agents, with audio rights sold to W F Howes. The book will be published in hardback and e-book on 9th May 2024.

The publisher says: “Unveiling a captivating new outlook on Earth’s natural history, science writer and zoologist Jules Howard retells our planet’s grand narrative from the perspective of the animal egg. Through lyrical prose, captivating storytelling and meticulous research, Howard offers a masterful narrative that challenges our perceptions and invites introspection about our place in the story of life.”

Its synopsis continues: “Each animal on the planet owes its existence to one very simple but crucial piece of evolutionary engineering: the egg. In Infinite Life, Jules Howard tells a new story of life on earth, taking the reader on a mind-bending journey from the churning coastlines of the Cambrian Period and Carboniferous coal forests ringing with insect choruses, to the earliest Triassic mammals.

“Eggs would evolve from out of the sea; be set by animals into soils, sands, canyons and mudflats; be dropped in nests wrapped in silk; hung in stick nests in trees, covered in crystallised shells or secured by placentas.”

Rigby said: “Infinite Life is an incredible imaginative feat from this expert storyteller, revealing how the very beginnings of life have transformed our planet in countless ways across millions of years. Eggs are, quite probably, the single biggest ‘invention’ in the history of evolution – awe-inspiring in their diversity and impact from ocean to desert, forest to mountain top.”

Howard said: “The evolution of the animal egg – how it has evolved, adapted and innovated over time – is the dramatic subplot missing in many accounts of how life on Earth came to be. Yet, quite simply, without this universal biological phenomenon, animals as we know them, including us, could not have evolved and flourished.

“Whether they belong to birds, insects, mammals or millipedes, animal eggs are objects shaped by their ecology, forged by mass extinctions, honed by natural selection to near-perfection. I am so grateful to Elliott & Thompson for giving me the chance to share this story with the world, re-framing and celebrating the role of the egg in the story of how we got here.”