- 998
Audubon, J.J.
Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
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Description
- Audubon, J.J.
- The Birds of America; From Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories. New York: George R. Lockwood, [C. 1870]
- printed book
Eight volumes, royal 8vo (10 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.; 263 x 170 mm). 500 hand-colored lithographed plates with color-printed backgrounds by J.T. Bowen after Aududon; some faint offsetting from plates, else a bright example. Publisher's binding of brown morocco decorated in blind and lettered in gilt, gilt edges; some rubbing along joints and raised bands.
Provenance
S. H. Pirie (bookplate)
Literature
Bennett p. 5; Nissen 52; Reese 34; Sabin 2364; McGill/Wood p. 208; Ayer/Zimmer p. 22 (for original octavo edition).
Catalogue Note
The last complete octavo edition of Audubon's great work. Audubon created sixty-five new images for the octavo edition of The Birds, supplementing the original 435 of the double-elephant folio edition of 1827-1838. The resulting series of 500 plates constitutes the most extensive American color-plate book produced up to that time. The Philadelphia printer J.T. Bowen reduced the double-elephant plates by camera lucida and the original configurations were altered so that only one species is depicted per plate.
A fire and collapse of the Lockwood warehouse floor in the 1870s destroyed the stones for this work, ensuring this edition was to be the last.
The colors in the present copy are particularly well preserved.