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Catesby, Mark
Description
2 volumes, folio (21 x 14 in.; 533 x 356 mm). 220 fine handcolored etched plates after and by Catesby, folding handcolored map in volume 2, title-pages printed in red and black in English and French, text in parallel columns of English and French, dedication and index leaves in both volumes, "An Account of Carolina and the Bahama Islands" bound following plates of volume 2 (in which p. vii has an interesting quarter-page laid-on paper repair done before the leaf was printed), etched headpiece by Catesby, historiated woodcut initials. Text and plates on papers with various watermarks, first 20 text leaves of volume 2 with page numerals corrected by hand (as often), "DU" on title-page corrected by hand; scattered light to moderate offsetting, foxing, and staining, a few plates bound upside down, supplemental plate 1.19 misnumbered 20, 2.49 plate and text heavily foxed. Contemporary mottled calf gilt, marbled endpapers, red edges; rebacked to style, corners restored, extremities quite rubbed, joints just splitting on volume 2. Burgundy morocco folding-cases.
Provenance
Literature
Catalogue Note
An outstanding copy of the second edition, revised by George Edwards, of "the most famous colorplate book of American plant and animal life. ... It is a delightful and amusing book [and] a fundamental and original work for the study of American species" (Hunt). Trained as a botanist, Catesby travelled to Virginia in 1712. He lodged in Williamsburg with his sister and brother-in-law, who had emigrated to the New World in 1712, and began to fulfill his "passionate desire of viewing as well the Animals as Vegetable Productions in their Native Countries; which were Strangers to England" (preface). He remained in British America for seven years, sending back to England collections of plants and seeds, as well as beginning to make natural history drawings.
With the encouragement of Sir Hans Sloane, William Sherard, and others to whom he had supplied botanical specimens—and who had seen his first drawings (now in the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle)—Catesby returned to America in 1722, to continue work on his Natural History, and the next four years he travelled extensively in the Carolinas, Florida, and the Bahamas. His preface provides a lengthy account of the development of this work, including his decision to study with Joseph Goupy in order to learn to etch his plates himself to ensure accuracy and economy.
Catesby also makes clear that he considered his illustrations, rather than his equally significant field observations, to be his most important achievement: "The Illuminating [of] Natural History is so particularly Essential to the perfect understanding of it, that I may aver a clearer Idea may be conceiv'd from the Figures of Animals and Plants in their proper Colours, than from the most exact Description without them: Wherefore I have been less prolix in the Discription, judging it unnecessary to tire the Reader with describing every Feather, yet I hope sufficient to distinguish them without Confussion" (preface).
"Mark Catesby made a valuable and important contribution to ornithological illustration. He was confident enough to break new ground—to portray his birds more naturally than before, with foliage backgrounds, and to adopt the folio format. He depicted the natural history of one area in its entirety, and often drew from living models. He was the first in a long line of ornithologists to teach himself to translate his drawings into a medium that produced multiple copies. As his was the earliest published natural history of a part of the New World, he has been called 'the father of American ornithology'" (Jackson).