John Murray triumphs in ‘heated’ eight-way auction for Panciroli’s book on evolution

Palaeontologist Dr Elsa Panciroli’s Survival of the Unfittest: A Natural History has been snapped up in a “heated” eight-way auction by John Murray.

Georgina Laycock, non-fiction publisher, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Carrie Plitt at Felicity Bryan Associates. North American rights, also at auction, were bought by Julie Will at Harper Wave, and rights have been acquired in the Netherlands by De Bezige Bij (pre-empt); in Germany by HarperCollins (at auction) and in Italy by Marsilio (at auction). Survival of the Unfittest will be published by John Murray in spring 2025.

John Murray outlines that, three years ago, palaeontologist and University of Oxford research fellow Dr Panciroli discovered that she was highly unlikely to have children. This “inspired her revolutionary new approach to science” and prompted her to ask the question: “Is procreation really the only legacy we can leave?"

The publisher goes on: “Dr Panciroli is an expert in early mammal fossils, and her scientific field is deeply concerned with evolution and inheritance. The deeper she looked into it, the more she saw that the stories we tell about evolution and reproduction – like ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘the biological imperative’ – are oversimplified and sometimes just plain wrong; nature is about so much more than genetic inheritance. Survival of the Unfittest is a passionate celebration of all the individuals and species that can’t or don’t have children.

“As she argues, species without their own offspring are not only common, they are essential to life. This is a fresh look at evolutionary history: an ambitious and paradigm-shifting work of popular science.”

Panciroli, also author of Beasts Before Us (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2021) and The Earth: A Biography of Life (Quercus Greenfinch, 2022), said: “Our interpretations of the natural world have revolved around the brutal fight to reproduce for so long [that] we can hardly see things any other way. It’s time to take a fresh look at evolutionary history and animal behaviour and reclaim the legacies of those believed to have none.”

Laycock commented: “Once in a blue moon a book comes along that genuinely changes your world view. Survival of the Unfittest offers a brilliant opportunity to broaden and deepen the way we look at evolution.”