Darwin’s first published book, now universally known as The Voyage of the Beagle, is the most often read and the most often printed of all his works, after On the origin of species. Its relation to the background of Darwin's evolutionary ideas has often been stressed.

The traditionally identified first issue forms the third volume of The Narrative of the Voyages of H. M. Ships Adventure and Beagle, edited by Captain Robert Fitzroy and published, in three volumes and an appendix to Volume II, in 1839 in London by Henry Colburn. In its first separate issue, also in 1839, it was called Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History. Whether the separate version was issued simultaneously with the set, or slightly later is unknown, as both were advertised in the same set of advertisements in August 1839. The text and maps of the separate version are identifical to the set except that pp. i-iv of the preliminaries are cancels and [v-vi], the original volume title, is discarded.

Though Darwin tended to discard or disperse the manuscripts of his later works after they were published, in some cases giving sheets to his children for use as scrap paper, he saved the  original autograph manuscript for this work, and it is preserved at Down House. The manuscript was reproduced in facsimile by Genesis Publications, London, 1979.