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Author: Audubon, John James
Title: The Birds of America, from Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories
Place Published: New York & Philadelphia
Publisher:J.J. Audubon, E.G. Dorsey for J.J. Audubon, and J.B. Chevalier
Date Published: 1840-1844
Description:

7 volumes. 500 hand-colored lithograph plates, tissue guards. (Royal 8vo) 25.4 x16.9 cm (10x6½"), blue quarter-morocco over purple ridged cloth, spines tooled with Audubon's turkey and lettered in gilt, plaid-patterned endpapers. Lists of subscribers at rear in all volumes. Index present in volume 7. First octavo edition, bound from the original parts.

A lovely set – with plates largely unaffected by foxing – of the first octavo edition of Audubon's ornithological masterpiece; perhaps the most important American color-plate book of the 19th century. The plates, accompanied for the first time in this edition by the text, were reduced and modified from the original Havell engravings for the double-elephant folio. The plates were reduced by camera lucida and some of the backgrounds entirely changed or greatly modified. To the original plate count included in the double-elephant folio edition, the octavo edition adds 65 new images for a total of 500 plates, making it "the most extensive color plate book produced in America up to that time" (Reese). Included for the first time are seven new species and seventeen others, previously described in the Ornithological Biography but not illustrated, are also shown for the first time. The original compositions were altered so that only one species is depicted per plate. The text itself is a revision of the Ornithological Biography, rearranged according to Audubon's "A Synopsis of the Birds of North America" (1839). Audubon writes in his introduction to this edition that it is his wish that a work similar to his large work should be published 'at such a price, as would enable every student or lover of nature to place it in his library'. The octavo Birds of America was originally issued in 100 parts, each containing five plates. Bennett p.5; Nissen IVB 51; Reese 34; Sabin 2364; McGill/Wood p.208; Ayer/Zimmer p.22.

Some chips and abrasions to leather, spine leaning on Vol. I, joints starting on Vol. VII, cracking to plate No. 11 55 at gutter, only mild foxing to plates with more substantial foxing to text leaves, a few occasional tears to leaves; very good or better overall.