The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals Science" concluded that "although some parts are a little tedious, from the amount of minute detail required, there is throughout so much of acute observation and amusing anecdote as to render it perhaps more attractive to general readers than any of Mr. Darwin's previous work". Eric Korn, in the "London Review of Books", describes how the book was claimed, and he argues subverted, by Margaret Mead and her "sympathisers", and then presented afresh by Paul Ekman. Ekman had collected pro-Darwin, anti-Mead evidence, Korn wrote, for the universality of human facial expression of emotions. Darwin, suggests Korn, avoided unsettling the Victorian
The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms went the less controversial direction of the lowly worm. His network of correspondents and fans responded to his interest and "earthworm anecdotes began surfacing in his mountain of mail". He had been interested in earthworms "since his first fishing days at The Mount and flirting days at Maer". Still, other work constrained him. Broken off from "Descent", he had to finish his next work "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals". By 1876, with his first grandson on the way, he felt his writing life was nearly over, with so much unfinished. He wanted to write on earthworms