Wolfman, I'm not disputing what you said about Wallace; but just to add a little color....
I saw E. O. Wilson and James Watson recently on Charlie Rose. Beautiful show. What an honor and pleasure to see those two conversing. They talked about Wallace a bit and mentioned that Darwin was aware that he needed to get his work published quickly if he wanted to beat Wallace. Fortunately he had everything ready to publish and had just been waiting for his wife to die before he published his work. He wanted to wait because she was very religious and he knew she wouldn't appreciate his message or the attention it would bring. This was a major reason he waited so long to publish after his voyage.
But as you say, Darwin wasn't the only one to have the lightbulb dawning back then.
I'm not too familiar with the details, so I hope I'm doing justice to what Wilson and Watson brought up. I think this was a show "plugging" both of their recently published books (just a coincidence) on Darwin (although before Wilson's "Creation").
~samwik
