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 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals initial correspondence with the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne Darwin set aside his material concerning emotional expression in order to complete "The Descent of Man", which covered human ancestry and sexual selection. Darwin concluded work on "The Descent of Man" on 15 January 1871. Two days later, he started on "The Expression of the Emotions" and, on 22 August 1872, he finished work on the proofs. In this book, Darwin brings his evolutionary theory into close approximation with behavioural science, although many Darwin scholars have remarked on a kind of spectral Lamarckism haunting the text of the "Emotions". Universal Nature of Expression: