Gould, John | His most subscribed work

Property from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, sold to benefit the care of the Museum's 22 million specimens and objects

Gould, John

The Birds of Great Britain. London: by the author, 1862-1873

5 volumes, folio (547 x 352mm). Dedication leaf, list of subscribers, lists of plates, 367 hand-colored lithographed plates from drawings by Gould, Joseph Wolf, H.C. Richter and W. Hart, mostly lithographed by Richter and Hart; each volume has intermittent faint spotting to some text leaves affecting two or three plates only. Publisher's deep green morocco gilt; minor shelfwear to edges, a little rubbed. 

"Such beautiful illustrations as those of the Birds of Great Britain scarcely existed before and are not likely to be surpassed" (R. Bowdler Sharpe).

This work held a special place in Gould's corpus; 468 subscribers are listed, and there were discussions of a second edition following its success. Gould playfully includes younger birds in their nests, and in the preface states, "Many of the public are quite unaware how the coloring of these large plates is accomplished; and not a few believe that they are produced by some mechanical process or by chromo-lithography. This, however, is not the case; every sky with its varied tints and every feather of each bird were colored by hand; and when it is considered that nearly two hundred and eighty thousand illustrations in the present work have been so treated, it will most likely cause some astonishment to those who give the subject a thought."

REFERENCE:

Fine Bird Books, p. 102; Nissen IVB 371; Sauer 23; Zimmer, p. 261

PROVENANCE:

Cecil George Savile Foljambe (bookplate) — Library of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (bookplate recording 22 November 1910 purchase)