The Birds of America
Audubon's 435 life-size bird prints, published 1827–1838.
John James Audubon’s The Birds of America features 435 hand-colored, life-size prints of U.S. birds, engraved on plates roughly 39 by 26 inches. Published in installments from 1827 to 1838 in Edinburgh and London, it depicts five extinct species and three that may be extinct. Audubon, a naturalist and painter, created the illustrations.
Quick Facts
- Title orig
- The Birds of America; from original drawings by John James Audubon
- Author
- John James Audubon
- Illustrator
- John James Audubon; Joseph Mason
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Subject
- Birds – North America; Birds – pictorial works
- Genre
- Ornithology
- Published
- 1827–1838
- Pages
- 435
Facts from the source article.
Early publication history
Around age 35, Audubon declared his intention to paint every bird in North America. He mainly used watercolours and pastel crayons, occasionally pencil, charcoal, chalk, gouache, and pen and ink, rather than oil paint. As early as 1807, he developed a method of using wires and threads to hold dead birds in lifelike poses while drawing them. In 1823, he went to Philadelphia and New York seeking financial support through subscriptions to publish his artwork. Subscribers received five plates at a time—three smaller birds, a larger bird, and a mid-sized bird—costing around $1,000 per set. The prints were produced from 1827 to 1838. Each plate was engraved, printed, and hand colored by Robert Havell of London, though William Lizars of Edinburgh engraved the first ten plates, with Havell finishing some of those. Havell sometimes added elements such as insects. In 1826, Audubon sailed for the United Kingdom with 250 original illustrations. After exhibiting in Liverpool and Manchester, he went to Edinburgh, where he met engraver William H. Lizars. Lizars engraved up to ten plates but stopped when his colourists went on strike. In 1827, Audubon engaged Robert Havell Jr. and his father Robert Havell Sr., with Havell Jr. overseeing the project to completion in 1838. The original edition, called the Havell Edition or Double Elephant Folio, was printed on handmade paper 39.5 inches tall by 28.5 inches wide. The principal printing technique was copperplate etching, with engraving and aquatint also used. Over fifty colorists applied each color in assembly-line fashion.
Public exhibitions
A full 8-volume, double-elephant folio version is on public display in the Audubon Room at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. This was the first book purchased by the university, bought in 1839 for $970. The entire volume of 435 plates is also available online at the websites of the University of Michigan and the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Since 1992, Louisiana State University Libraries have hosted Audubon Day, a semi-annual public showing of all four volumes of LSU's copy, which formerly belonged to the Duke of Northumberland and was purchased with a grant from the Crown Zellerbach Corporation in 1964. In 2003, the University of Pittsburgh, which owns a complete collection that had been recently restored, mounted a major exhibition of 62 selected plates. The university later constructed an exhibit case in Hillman Library to continuously display a rotating selection of plates. In 2007, the university digitized every plate and Audubon's Ornithological Biography, presenting the complete set online. In 2004, four college students attempted a heist of Transylvania University's four double-sized folios, tasering the librarian, but failed and received seven-year prison terms. From September 2005 to March 2006, the National Gallery of Art exhibited 50 hand-colored prints from its early edition, described as one of only two known sets preserved in their original unbound state.
Collections and archives
Only 120 complete sets are known to exist. One complete copy is part of the Darlington Collection at the University of Pittsburgh. Dartmouth College owns a partial set that originally belonged to Daniel Webster, along with a rare copy of Audubon's original prospectus, of which only 16 copies exist. The Birds of America is on permanent display in Trinity College, Connecticut's Watkinson Library, owned by engraver Robert Havell and donated in 1900 by Gurdon Wadsworth Russell. Union College in Schenectady, NY, possesses a complete copy purchased by its president Eliphalet Nott in 1844. Toronto Public Library holds a copy, originally a four-volume set, now unbound with plates digitized and stored in custom-made boxes. Another complete copy, bound in 17 volumes, belongs to the Library of Parliament in Ottawa. McGill University Library's copy is part of its Blacker Wood Natural History Collection. In Australia, State Library Victoria purchased a four-volume complete copy in 1871 from William Stallard. The Mitchell Library in Glasgow holds a full four-volume set. Meisei University in Tokyo houses another complete collection.
Recent sales
A copy of The Birds of America set a record for any book at auction in March 2000, when Sheikh Saud Al-Thani of Qatar paid $8.8 million for it at Christie's. That same year, the Fox-Bute copy sold at Christie's in New York for $8,802,500. In December 2005, the unbound Providence Athenaeum Set went for $5.6 million, also at Christie's. By December 2010, The Economist calculated that, after adjusting for inflation, five of the ten highest prices ever paid for printed books were for copies of this work. That same month, a complete first edition sold at Sotheby's in London for £7,321,250, another auction record for a printed book; London art dealer Michael Tollemache placed the winning bid. Its original owner had been Henry Witham of Durham. On 20 January 2012, a complete first edition sold at Christie's in New York for $7.9 million to an anonymous American collector bidding by phone. On 18 December 2019, a complete first edition that had first belonged to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society and later to Joseph Verner Reed Jr. sold at Sotheby's in New York for $6.6 million. Of the 120 known surviving copies, only thirteen remain in private hands.
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