Information on each of the following characters, and their works can be found on this web page with many other short biographies of 'people in evolution'. Note that several of the classical writings are available online: 

• Aristotle  (384-322 BC) : Teleology, Scale of being: Scala Naturae
• Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778): 'Systema Naturae' (1735)
• Thomas Malthus: 'An Essay on the Principle of Population' (1798)
• William Paley : 'Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature'  (1802)
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829): Zoological Philosophy (1809) ('Philosophie Zoologique')
• Robert Chambers: 'Vestiges of the Natural History of the Creation'. (1844)
• Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913): 'On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From The Original Type', (1858)
• Charles Darwin (1809-1882): 'On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life' (1859): "More individuals are born than can possibly survive. A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live, and which shall die,- which variety of species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct. " "...this principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection".