Developmental psychology emerged within the evolutionary, progressive thought of the later part of the 19th century. Concerned with processes by which new forms develop and new phenomena emerge, evolutionary thinking turned readily to the natural history of childhood. In 1877, the great biologist, Charles Darwin, and the philosopher, Hippolyte Taine, published short observations on the early development of their own children. When Wilhelm Preyer, a highly respected physiologist, followed with his own remarkable and much more extensive observations, the biographical study of childhood had begun in earnest. This series reprints seminal texts that defined this movement. Volume 1 brings major theoretical statements articulating a rationale for the study of childhood together with the first and most influential "baby biographies". Remaining volumes in the series reprint the full texts of five monographic contributions that shaped the discipline: Wilhelm Preyer's Mind of the Child , is the first full-length biographical study of psychological development; Frederick Tracy's Psychology of Childhood is the first systematic review of the child study movement as a whole; James Mark Baldwin's Mental Development in the Child and the Race and Social and Ethical Interpretations provided the emerging developmental psychology with its first broad theoretical framework; and Aspects of Child Life and Education reviews the work of the most influential contributors to the child study movement, those gathered around G Stanley Hall.