Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the publisher whose editorial decisions shaped the second edition of The Selfish Gene while preserving the original book’s text. In Dawkins’s account, the press’s role extended from manuscript criticism and production to the design of a new edition that would add later developments without revising the work line by line.

Role in the Book’s Production

For the first edition, Michael Rodgers of Oxford University Press criticized the manuscript and attended to the book’s production, work Dawkins singled out as extending far beyond ordinary expectations. In the preface to the second edition, Dawkins thanked Thomas Webster, Hilary McGlynn, and others at the press for cheerfully tolerating his whims and delays.

The Second-Edition Decision

When Oxford University Press approached Dawkins about a second edition, it argued that a conventional, comprehensive, page-by-page revision would be inappropriate. The original book, in the author’s view, carried the youthful quality of the period in which it had been written; revising it extensively risked dulling that character by adding facts, complications, and cautions. The agreed approach was to leave the original text intact, including its acknowledged flaws, and use endnotes to address corrections, responses, and subsequent developments.

New Material and Editorial Context

The edition plan also called for entirely new chapters, allowing the book to engage with subjects that had become prominent in the intervening years. Dawkins identified the result as Chapters 12 and 13. His account presents the press not only as a publisher but as a participant in defining the form of the new edition: preserving the historical texture of the original while creating space for later work.

Significance

This editorial strategy reflects a balance between preservation and extension. Oxford University Press’s refusal of a standard revision kept the first edition available in its original form, while notes and new chapters carried the book forward. The decision therefore shaped how readers encountered both the work’s early arguments and the developments that followed its publication.