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AUDUBON, John James (1785-1851)

The Birds of America, from drawings made in the United States and their territories

New York & Philadelphia: E.G.Dorsey for J.J.Audubon and [vols.I-V] J.B.Chevalier, [1839-]1840-1844. 7 volumes, octavo (10 3/8 x 6 5/8 inches). Half-titles, 18pp. subscribers' lists. 500 hand-coloured lithographed plates after Audubon by W.E. Hitchcock, R. Trembley and others, printed by J.T. Bowen of Philadelphia (plates 1-135, 151-500) or George Endicott of New York (plates 136-150), numerous wood-engraved anatomical figures in text. Contemporary black half morocco over black grained cloth-covered boards, covers with border bwteen cloth and leather ruled in gilt, spines in five compartments with semi-raised bands, the bands highlighted in gilt and flanked by fillets in blind, lettered in gilt in the second and fourth compartments, marbled endpapers (expert repairs to joints of vols.I, VI and VII). Housed in modern maroon cloth boxes, leather gilt labels. Provenance: W.S. Lincoln (subscriber from Boston, signatures to title pages in vols. II-VII).

A very fine subscriber's copy of the first octavo edition of "Audubon's Great National Work" with the plates remarkably free of the spotting that often mars this work. This is the first complete edition and the first American edition, with the 'Black-shouldered Elanus' plate (no. 16) in its earliest state. The work is one of the "most beautiful, popular, and important natural history books published in America in the nineteenth century... [also] representing the best of pre-Civil War American lithography and giving Audubon the opportunity finally to display his scholarship and genius to a large American audience for the first time" (Ron Tyler)

The plates, here accompanied by the text for the first time, were reduced and variously modified from the Havell engravings in the double-elephant folio. Seven new species are figured and seventeen others, previously described in the Ornithological Biography but not illustrated, were also shown for the first time. Audubon may have been prompted to publish the reduced version of his double-elephant folio by the appearance in 1839 of John Kirk Townsend's rival Ornithology of the United States, or, as he writes in the introduction to the present work, he may have succumbed to public demand and his wish that a work similar to his large work should be published but `at such a price, as would enable every student or lover of nature to place it in his Library'.

The first edition of the octavo work is certainly the most famous and accessible of all the great American colour plate books, and now represents the only realistic opportunity that exists for collectors to own an entire collection of Audubon images in a form that was overseen and approved by the great artist himself. The octavo Birds of America was originally issued in 100 parts, each containing five plates. The whole story of the production of the book, with detailed information about every aspect of the project, is told by Ron Tyler in Audubon's Great National Work (Austin, 1993). The story Tyler tells of the difficulties of production and marketing are revealing of the whole world of colour printing in mid-19th-century America. The enormous success of the work was important to Audubon for two main reasons: first, it was a moneymaker, marketed throughout the United States on a scale that the great cost of the original Birds of America had made impossible. Second, by combining a detailed text with careful observations next to his famous images, he offered further proof that he was as good a scientific naturalist as the members of the scientific establishment who had scorned his earlier work.

Bennett p.5; Fries, Appendix A; Nissen IVB 51; Reese Stamped With A National Character 34; Ripley 13; Ron Tyler Audubon's Great National Work (1993) Appendix I; Sabin 2364; Wood p.208; Zimmer p.22

#21358$115,000.00
 
 
AUDUBON, John James (1785-1851)

The Birds of America. A selection of plates [... A selection of landscape plates]

Leipzig & London: printed in the German Democratic Republic for Edition Leipzig and the Ariel Press, 1972-1973. 2 volumes, double-elephant folio (38 5/8 x 26 5/8 inches). 2 printed facsimiles of the original titles bound as additional titles. 40 plates, printed in colours, after John James Audubon. Original bindings using complementary colours: half linen over paper-covered boards, titled on upper covers.

The 'Leipzig Audubon': limited to 1000 numbered sets signed by a director of the Ariel Press, of which only 250 sets (numbered between 751 and 1000) were offered for sale in the United States

The "Leipzig Edition' includes a selection of Audubon's greatest images, offering a full-size alternative to the original Havell edition.The images included in vol.I are: White-throated Sparrow, Baltimore Oriole, Blue-winged Yellow Warbler, Carolina Parrot, American Goldfinch, Painted Bunting, Red-shouldered Hawk, Passenger Pigeon, Le petit Caporal, Florida Jay, Pileated Woodpecker, Snowy Owl, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, American Sparrow Hawk, White-crowned Pigeon, Summer Wood Duck, Scarlet Tanager [and others], White-winged Crossbill, Band-tailed Pigeon, and Ten Woodpeckers. The 'landscape' images in vol.II are: Black-billed Cuckoo, Swallow-tailed Hawk, Willow Grous or Large Ptarmigan, Louisiana Heron, Tufted Auk, Red Phalarope, Purple Heron, Tropic Bird, King Duck, Harlequin Duck, Blue Crane or Heron, Roseate Spoonbill, Shoveller Duck, Long-tailed or Dusky Grous, Cock of the Plains, White Heron, Glossy Ibis, Louisiana Hawk, Scarlet Ibis, Western Duck.

This selection was printed in facsimile from the Meiningen State Museum copy of the original work printed by Havell. The Havell edition was expensive at the time of publication and this has not changed. The last complete copy to appear on the market sold for a staggering $8,802,500 in a sale in New York in March 2000. Currently, the increasingly rare individual plates from this edition, when they do appear, generally sell for between $2,500 and $150,000 depending on the image. The quality of the Leipzig Audubon plates is apparent to any discerning collector and it is clear that they offer an attractive alternative to the equivalent Havell edition plates, given the latter's spiraling prices.

Cf. Anker 17; cf. Fine Bird Books (1990) p.73; cf. Fries The Double Elephant Folio (Chicago, 1973); cf. Nissen IVB 49; cf. Zimmer pp.18-20.

#23549$3,750.00
 
 
BEEBE, William Charles (1877-1962)

A Monograph of the Pheasants

London: published under the auspices of the New York Zoological Society by Witherby and Co., 1918-1927. 4 volumes, folio (15 15/16 x 11 3/4 inches). Titles in red and black, 90 coloured lithograph or collotype plates, after A. Thorburn, G.E. Lodge, H. Gronvold, L.A. Fuertes, Chas. R. Knight, H. Jones, and E. Megargee, 88 photogravure plates (many with 2 images) from photographs by Beebe and others, 20 distribution maps printed in red and black by Stanford's, the chromolithographs and photogravures with captioned tissue-guards. Original maroon cloth, upper covers and spines lettered in gilt, top edge gilt.

First edition of perhaps the greatest ornithological work of the last century, "notable not only for its beauty and the wealth of information it contains, but also for the unusual grace of its prose" (Ellis).

Limited edition of 600 copies, this number 187. Beebe's text is based on his own extensive expeditions through Asia, as well as his study of the collections of the leading natural history museums around the world. The illustrations, including portraits of birds and photographs of habitats, add to the beauty and value of the volumes.

Anker 31; Ellis 203; Nissen IVB 84; Nissen SVB 41; Tate 119; Wood 228; Zimmer 49.

#22727$5,000.00
 
 
BLAAUW, Frans Ernst (1860-1936)

A Monograph of the Cranes

Leiden & London: Brill for E.J. Brill and R.H. Porter, 1897. Folio (17 3/4 x 14 1/4 inches). Half-title. 22 chromolithographic plates, finished by hand, by J.G. Keulemans after H. Leutemann and Keulemans, all cut to the edge of the image and tipped onto backing sheets in imitation of watercolours (as issued). Expertly bound to style in dark olive green morocco, the covers with inlaid contemporary dark olive green morocco panels incorporating elaborate decorative borders, the spine in six compartments with raised bands, lettered in the second, the others with overall repeat decoration in gilt, marbled endpapers.

A beautiful copy of the first edition, limited to 170 copies, of this "handsome, useful work" (Mengel).

Fifteen of the species figured were drawn from life in 1872 at the Amsterdam Zoological Gardens, by Heinrich Leutemann under the supervision of G.F. Westerman, the zoo's director and founder. Blaauw records in the preface that the idea of using the drawings as the basis for a monograph on the Crane family had been Westerman's: "A few months before his death Westerman came to talk to me about ... [Leutemann's] drawings, saying it had always been his wish to publish them along with a complete history of the Cranes ... he told me his intention to leave me the drawings... and expressed his desire that I should accomplish what he had failed to do." Blaauw wrote the interesting and informative text and had John Gerrard Keulemans produce an additional image of a species not featured by Leutemann, as well as an additional six plates of young birds and eggs. Keulemans then went on to produce all the chromolithographs. The final result is a worthy memorial to the founder and first director of Amsterdam zoo, and an excellent example of the work of J. G. Keulemans, one of the greatest ornithological artists of his generation.

Fine Bird Books ( 1990 )p. 77; Keulemans & Coldewey Feathers to Brush p.60; Mengel 287; Nissen IVB 105; Zimmer p.59.

#22750$5,950.00
 
 
BONAPARTE, Charles Lucian (1803-1857)

American Ornithology; or, the Natural History of Birds inhabiting the United States, not given by Wilson.

Philadelphia: Samuel Augustus Mitchell [vol I]; Carey, Lea & Carey [vols II & III]; Carey & Lea [vol IV], 1825-1828-1828-1833. 4 volumes, folio (15 x 12 inches). 27 hand-colored engraved plates by Alexander Lawson (11 after Titian R. Peale, 15 after A. Rider, and 1 after J.J. Audubon and A. Rider). Extra-illustrated with 5 uncoloured engraved plates in vol. IV. (Usual paper toning in vol. IV, minor offsetting in vols. II-IV, short repaired tear to an uncoloured plate in vol. IV). 19th-century black half morocco over green cloth-covered boards, the spine in six compartments with raised bands, lettered in the second and fourth, the compartments bordered in gilt with double fillets, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. Provenance: Juliette Clary (inscribed by Bonaparte on the vol. I title, "Offert par l'auteur a sa Cousine Juliette").

A very fine set of the first edition, first issue of this important American ornithological work, inscribed by Prince Bonaparte to his cousin and with additional uncoloured states of the plates in volume four.

Bonaparte's important continuation of Wilson's American Ornithology describes 60 birds not in the original work. "A love for the same department of natural science, and a desire to complete the vast enterprise so far advanced by Wilson's labors, has induced us to undertake the present work," Bonaparte writes in the preface, "in order to illustrate what premature death prevented him from accomplishing, as well as the discoveries subsequently made in the feathered tribes of these States."

"The work which had been performed by Wilson's hands alone now gave employment to several individuals. Titian R., the fourth son of Charles Wilson Peale, not only collected many of the birds figured while on the Long expedition, vvhich were credited to Thomas Say, who originally described them in footnotes scattered through the report; or in a subsequent private trip to Florida during the winter and spring of 1825, under the patronage of Bonaparte; but also drew the figures engraved for the first, and two plates for the fourth and last volume. A German emigrant by the name of Alexander Rider, of whom little is known beyond that he was a miniature painter in 1813, and a portrait and historical painter in 1818, was responsible for the remainder of the drawings with the exception of the two figures of plate 4 of volume I..." (Frank L. Burns, On Alexander Wilson).

That plate, the Great Crow Blackbird, is notable as being the first book appearance of any engraving after John James Audubon. Perhaps the most influential artist involved with the work, however, was Bonaparte's master engraver Alexander Lawson, arguably the most talented ornithological engraver in America at that time.

Three issues of the first edition of Wilson's continuation have been identified. This fine set is comprised of the rare first issue of vol. 1 (with the Mitchell imprint and containing the first issue of plate 6 in that volume (see Ellis/Mengel) and with first issues of volumes two through four (published by Carey & Lea and printed by William Brown). Carey & Lea later reissued the first volume, with their own imprint, after purchasing the rights to the publication from Mitchell in 1828. The third issue includes volumes reprinted by T.K. and P.G. Collins (with their imprint replacing that of William Brown) for Carey & Lea with unchanged dates on the titles but actually printed in about 1835 after the completion of the final volume.

We are aware of the existence of only one other inscribed set of Bonaparte's Ornithology to have appeared on the market in the last 30 years, inscribed to the Count Charles de Chatillon.

Anker 47; Bennett 16; Coues 1:609; Ellis/Mengel 312a-b; Fine Bird Books (1990) p. 78; Nissen IVB 116; Sabin 6264; Wood 247; Zimmer p.64.

#22742$15,000.00
 
 
BRASHER, Rex (1869-1960)

Birds and Trees of North America ... Done in Chickadee Valley, near Kent, Connecticut

Kent, Connecticut: Rex Brasher Associates, 1929-1932. 12 volumes, oblong folio (12 x 17 1/2 inches). 866 photogravure plates by the Meriden Gravure Company after Brasher, hand-coloured by Brasher using an airbrush and the pochoir process, each signed in pen or pencil by Brasher and mounted on cloth guard at inner margin, numerous vignettes and decorative initials, many tinted by hand. Title page to vol.IV in manuscript in Brasher's distinctive semi-calligraphic manuscript hand, vols.IV, V and XII signed by Brasher on the title, vol.II signed and dated by Brasher. Original half leather gilt, over masonite boards, the upper cover with three-colour blocked design below the author and title blocked in gilt, by Brewer Cantelmo Co. Inc. of New York, vol.IV with original onlaid card label to upper cover and a variant design on the board incorporating gilt titling "Game Birds / of North America / Rex Brasher," vol.XII with original onlaid leather label to upper cover, the whole contained in 12 modern custom-built portrait-format dark brown morocco-backed brown cloth boxes, the interiors with pitched platforms which allow each volume to lay flat, the spines in seven compartments with raised bands, the bands highlighted with a gilt roll and flanked by gilt fillets, lettered in gilt in the second and fourth compartments.

[with:]
Rex BRASHER. [A preliminary prospectus for] Birds and Trees of North America. Kent, Ct.: [no date but after May 1928] Oblong folio (12 x 17 1/2 inches). 1p. of general explanatory text; 4ll. of text relating to the plates. 4 photogravure plates by the Meriden Gravure Company after Brasher, hand-coloured by Brasher using an airbrush and the pochoir process. Original cloth-backed thick cream paper wrappers, titled in black on the upper cover.

A very fine set of this extraordinary work on the native birds and trees of North America, limited to 100 copies, by "the greatest bird painter of all time" (John Burroughs). This copy number 92, each volume signed by the author. This is a special issue with every image signed by hand by Brasher. Together with a very rare preliminary prospectus.

The extraordinary conditions under which this work was assembled have ensured that no two copies of this work are identical, but the present example is truly exceptional with every image signed by the artist, the original manuscript title page to vol.IV hand-written by Brasher in his distinctive and very attractive semi-calligraphic hand, and with an unrecorded variant binding hinting at Brasher's plans to issue a version of his great work concentrating on just the "Game Birds of North America". We have been unable to establish how many other copies include the distinction of having the plates signed, but the signatures can surely be taken to indicate that the plates in the present copy were in some way considered by Brasher to be superior to those in the 'regular' issues. A further indication of the 'cottage industry' nature of this exceptional publication is that this copy contains one short of the maximum possible number of plates, and contains two more plates than are called for by Nissen. The 866 plates include images of 1,071 bird species or sub-species and 383 identified images of native American trees and shrubs.

The work marked the completion of a project that Brasher had begun in 1878: he determined to paint all of the birds of North America from life. With this is mind, he started bird painting seriously when he was about 16 but none of his early work survives as he grew dissatisfied and twice destroyed all his extant works. He finally mastered his chosen medium through the help and advice of Louis Agassiz Fuertes, whom he met in 1907 in the American Museum of Natural History. Brasher's chosen goal required him to study and record the birds in their natural habitat wherever possible. This meant numerous field trips, all of which he financed himself by various means; he worked on a fishing boat to allow him to study sea-birds, and many of his other trips were paid for by betting on the horses (a spectacular $ 10,000. win paid for an extended trip to the Midwest, the Smokies and the Gulf Coast). He travelled by train and on foot for many months at a time, pausing only to mail home his notes and drawings. On his return he would work up the paintings in his New York apartment.

In 1911 Brasher bought a 150-acre farm which he called Chickadee Valley, near Kent, Connecticut, and it was here that much of the preliminary work for The Birds and Trees ... was carried out. By 1924 he considered that he had completed the task that he had set for himself 47 years earlier, but, not content with this monumental achievement, he now set himself the additional task of publishing his paintings with a suitable text. He discovered that it was going to be too expensive to reproduce the paintings using colour-printing, so settled on having the Meriden Gravure Company produce black and white photogravure prints. These were then coloured by hand using an unusual combination of stencils and airbrush. His niece Marie helped him with the text which was printed by the New Milford Times. The various components were assembled in a suitably renovated barn on the farm. According to the present prospectus, the original intention had been to publish 500 sets at $ 100 per volume (although a figure of $200 per volume is recorded elsewhere). By October 1929 when the first volume was sent out, 97 subscriptions had been received. The stock market crash followed shortly afterwards and the print-run was reduced to 100, but even this represents a huge achievement by Brasher: in four years he hand-coloured in the region of 90,000 prints. "Mr. Brasher's loving care bestowed in each hand-coloured plate is in the tradition of a hundred years earlier...Brasher's Birds and Trees belongs in a special category that is unique. Brasher had not written a great deal but his pages are interlarded with poetic imagery, often printed in contrasting italic or manuscript-style type....His work stands apart on the sideline of time, not to be judged with his contemporaries, nor indeed to be criticized. It is simply Rex Brasher" (Yale/Ripley).

"Rex Brasher's records of the birds of North America was encyclopedic...Audubon, who did not go to the Far West, and Fuertes, who had to concentrate on work as an illustrator, had painted only about 400 species and subspecies. Brasher worked from a checklist of the American Ornithologists' Union, generally regarded as virtually complete. He painted from life birds now extinct, such as the heath hen, passenger pigeon, [Carolina perroquet] and Eskimo curlew. Naturalists called Brasher's work 'the most complete pictorial reference to the birds of North America.' Time Magazine, comparing Brasher with Audubon and Fuertes, said: 'Rex Brasher alone had simultaneously the time, the ability, the monumental persistence, and the hard-headed fidelity to do it all.' Brasher told an interviewer that he had always hated steady work, and took jobs only because he had to. He said his prime goal had been accuracy... He could not conceive of a world without bird song, without their colour and beauty" (Doris E. Cook, The Monumental Life-Work of Rex Brasher , p. 14)

Nissen IVB 134; Wood 254; Yale/Ripley 39.

#22728$60,000.00
 
 
CASSIN, John (1813-1869)

Illustrations of the Birds of California, Texas, Oregon, British and Russian America. Intended to contain descriptions and figures of all North American birds not given by former American authors, and a general synopsis of North American Ornithology

Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., [1853]-1856. Quarto (10 3/16 x 6 7/8 inches). [i]-viii, 1- 298pp. 50 hand-coloured lithographs, printed by J.T. Bowen of Philadelphia, 18 after George G. White, 32 drawn on stone by William E. Hitchcock. Expertly bound to style in dark blue straight-grained morocco over contemporary marbled paper-covered boards, the spine in six compartments with raised bands, lettered in gilt in the the second, the other compartments with repeat decoration in gilt composed from various small tools, marbled endpapers, marbled edges. Provenance: B.A. Stanard (early ink stamp).

The first edition of Cassin's additions to Audubon: an important American colour-plate and ornithological work.

Cassin intended his work to supplement that of Audubon. He had originally suggested to Audubon's sons a plan for extending the octavo edition of Audubon's The Birds of America, but difficulty concerning credit on the titlepage sank the scheme, and Cassin proceeded with his own publication. His original intention was to issue a work containing 150 plates but about halfway through the issue of the parts this was reduced to 50 plates. Cassin used the same lithographer as the Audubons, J.T. Bowen of Philadelphia, to produce the beautiful plates of American birds, consisting entirely of western species that Audubon had never observed. Cassin was a trained scientist as well as careful artist and observer, and his work took American ornithology to a new level of technical competence, becoming the first American bird book to use trinomial nomenclature.

Anker 92; Bennett p.21; Cowan p.110; Lada-Mocarski 144; McGrath p.85; Nissen IVB 173; Reese Stamped with a National Character 42; Sabin 11369; Zimmer p.124.

#22730$6,000.00
 
 
CORY, Charles Barney (1857-1921)

Beautiful and Curious Birds of the World

Boston: published by the author for the subscribers, October 1880-1883. 7 original parts, folio (27 x 21 inches). Letterpress title (verso blank), dedication to Joel Asaph Allen (verso blank), contents leaf (verso blank), preface leaf (verso blank), 20 text leaves. 18 lithographed plates only (of 20, 12 hand-colored) by Joseph Smit and others. (Lacking from part I: "Ptilorus paradiseaus" [Rifle Bird of Paradise]; from part II: Cicinnurus regius [King Bird of Paradise]). Unbound as issued within cloth-backed publisher's paper-covered boards, the upper covers with titling and uncoloured lithographic vignette, within a single modern brown cloth four-fold chemise, all within a modern brown morocco-backed brown cloth box, the spine in seven compartments with raised bands, lettered in the second and third compartments, the others with repeat decoration in gilt.

An almost complete copy of a "very rare book" (Bennett), limited to 200 copies. In excellent condition, with beautiful plates on a grand scale including some of Smit's finest work. Only one copy of this work (also incomplete) is listed as having sold at auction in the past twenty-five years.

"In writing the present work I have striven to bring together some of the wonderful examples of the ornithological world, and to illustrate them in such a manner that others besides naturalists may become acquainted with the beautiful forms of bird life which inhabit our globe" (Preface). Given Cory's stated aim it is unsurprising that he has concentrated on the most spectacular bird family of all: the Birds of Paradise and their relatives the Lyre Birds and the Spotted Bower bird. Twelve of the twenty plates are from this group. The other eight include two of the best known extinct bird species: the Dodo and the Great Auk (also included amongst the extinct species is the Labrador Duck). The remaining depict many unusual species, with images of the Kiwi, the Ruff, the California Condor, the Black-headed Plover, and the Sacred Ibis.

Bennett p. 28; BM(NH) I, p. 387; Fine Bird Books (1990), p. 87; McGrath p. 59; Wood 30; Nissen IVB 205; Nissen SVB 109; Zimmer p.137.

#20208$27,500.00
 
 
CRADOCK, Marmaduke (1660-1717)

[A set of four ornithological prints]

London: Josephus Sympson, 1741. Large folio (16 1/2 x 20 5/16 inches). Without text (as issued). 4 copper-engraved plates by Josephus Sympson after Marmaduke Cradock, window-mounted within a modern cloth box, leather lettering-piece.

A fine lively series featuring at least 16 different species of birds.

Cradock was born at Somerton, near Ilchester, in Somerset in about 1660. He was apprenticed to a house painter in London, but at the end of the apprenticeship turned to painting animals, birds and still life. His success with private patrons was limited and, in the main, he produced pictures for dealers. The DNB describes his work for Josephus Sympson as being `very spirited' and notes that it was not until after his death that the 'merits of his pictures were recognised, and they rose in value'. Walpole praised some of his work, and examples are included in Lord Derby's famous collection at Knowsley and the Yale Centre for British Art.
The subjects of the plates are as follows:
1. A kestrel (?) carries off a chick, whilst a cock and hen and their four remaining chicks take flight, looking on are a pea-hen (?) and a barn owl, whilst a wren and a tit squabble on a roof nearby.
2. A cock pheasant stands guard on a stump, a juvenile pheasant makes off with an ear of corn, at a stream close by two kingfishers perch, on the banks of the stream a family of ducks (a drake, the female and 4 ducklings) feed, above them a third kingfisher flies off, in the background a duck sits on her nest.
3. A pigeon stands on a block of masonry, watched by a tit, a robin and a second pigeon, a short-tailed parrot perches on a nearby branch, above a pair of lapwings.
4. A woodpecker returns to the nest-hole to be greeted by its mate, on a nearby branch three sparrows perch, to the right of them are a pair of swallows and a fourth sparrow preening itself.

#3547$6,000.00
 
 
EDWARDS, George (1694-1773).

A Natural History of Uncommon Birds, and of Some Other Rare and Undescribed Animals

London: printed by C. Rickaby "for the author" [i.e. William Gardiner and Messrs. Robinson], "1743-1751" [but watermarked text 1801-1805, plates 1794-1804]. 4 parts bound in 2 volumes. Titles and text printed on wove or laid paper, two general titles (one in French and one in English) at the front of vol.I with engraved vignettes by Johann Sebastian Müller. 1 hand-coloured etched emblematic frontispiece, 211 etched plates (printed on wove or laid paper, 210 finely hand-coloured, 1 uncoloured etched plate of the 'Samoyed') all by and after Edwards, woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials. (Plates 179 and 180 together with the accompanying text leaves spotted).

[With:]
EDWARDS, George (1694-1773). Gleanings of Natural History, Exhibiting Figures of Quadrupeds, Birds, Insects, Plants, &c. London: printed by C. Rickaby for "the author" [i.e. William Gardiner and Messrs. Robinson], "1758-1760" [but plates watermarked 1803-1805]. 3 parts bound in 2 volumes. Titles and text printed on wove or laid paper, one general title at the front of vol.I with engraved vignettes by Johann Sebastian Müller, letterpress English and French general title and part-titles, text in English and French in double columns, translated by J. du Plessis and Edmond Barker. 1 uncoloured engraved portrait of the author by Miller after "Dandridg," 152 etched plates (printed on wove or laid paper) all finely hand-coloured, by and after Edwards and others.

Together 4 volumes. Quarto (11 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches). Uniform contemporary red straight-grained morocco, covers with border of a triple gilt fillet, spines in six compartments with double raised bands, the bands highlighted with gilt fillets and roll tools, lettered in the second and fourth compartments, gilt turn-ins, gilt edges. Provenance: George Savile Foljambe (1800-1869, Osberton Hall, Nottinghamshire, England, armorial bookplate).

A spectacular set of "one of the most important of all bird books, both as a fine bird book and a work of ornithology" (Fine Bird Books).

This issue, bound circa 1815, benefits greatly from being published at a time when two book-arts were at a high point: the art of hand-colouring was arguably at its most sophisticated and the design and execution of bindings was equally exceptional. The colouring in this issue has the clear jewel-like quality that is a feature of the work of the best colourists of the Regency period. The same period also produced some of best binders since the 17th-century Restoration masters and the present set is a delightfully-understated example of the kind of craftsmanship of which they were capable.

Edwards "has been well described as an unscientific but very accurate describer and painter of animal life, and his writings will always remain of paramount authority, from the faithfulness of his description of many new birds, subsequently incorporated in the Linnaean System. He had, says Swainson, the simplicity and piety of Izaac Walton, and may be looked upon as one of our greatest worthies. He retired about 1764 to Plaistow, died July 23, 1773" (Mullens and Swann p.194). "Through the influence of Sir Hans Sloane, [Edwards] was chosen Librarian to the Royal College of Physicians ... Almost immediately after he was appointed ... Edwards commenced the preparation of a series of coloured drawings of animals and birds, used later to illustrate [the present work]; for these he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Society and subsequently elected a Fellow" (Lisney p.127).

The history of the publication of the present work has not been fully unraveled. The opportunism of eighteenth-century publishing produced a large number of possible variants which have yet to be fully described bibliographically. The work was hugely successful and went through a number of transformations whilst under Edwards' control, including the issuing of a French text edition. Shortly after he retired in 1769 he sold "to Mr. James Robson, Bookseller...all the remaining copies of my Natural History… coloured under my immediate inspection, together with all my copper-plates, letter-press, and every article in my possession relative to it… and that my labours may be handed down to posterity with integrity, truth, and exactness, I have delivered into his hands a complete set of plates, highly coloured by myself, as a standard to those Artists who may be employed in colouring them for the future" (George Edwards, declaration quoted in Robson's Some Memoirs… of George Edwards, dated May Ist, 1769).

Cf. Anker 124-126; cf. Fine Bird Books (1990) p.93; cf. Lisney 188, 192-193, 197-198, 200-201, 203, 205, 208, and 211; cf. Mullens and Swann pp. 195-196; cf. Nissen IVB 286-289; cf. Zimmer pp.192-194 and 196-199.

[Bound at the end of the second work are:]
[J. ROBSON(?)] Some Memoirs of the Life and Works of George Edwards. London: for J.Robson, 1776. Crown folio. Lacking the 4 engraved plates. Zimmer p.529.
[and: ] Carolus LINNAEUS. A Catalogue of the Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Insects... contained in Edwards's Natural History ... with their Latin names. London: for J. Robson, 1776.

#20744$50,000.00
 
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