Meet Paul Parrot, Rare Bird Casanova & Star Of Rare Book

by Albert

Today's guest blogger is, once more, Albert the Writing Parrot, a thirty-four year old Yellow-Naped Amazon, Booktryt's mascot, my ward since his five-months old birthday, and, pathetically, my most successful long-term relationship. He knows more about these books than I do. If his writing voice sounds similar to mine do not be surprised. He is, after all, a parrot  - SJG.

Title-page.

Me again, pressed into service with the promise of a filbert thrown my way. I'm a conditioned fool.

Tittums Deserting Fido.

As the go-to bird on parrot books I'm often asked, What's the best volume on Mr. Paul Parrot, the notoriously horny hook-bill, fine-feathered lothario, and wandering roué with wings?

Step into my cage, sit at my zygodactyl feet, lend me an ear (I need a nosh), and I shall tell you, strictly entre-nous, a scandalous tale exceeded only, perhaps, by that of Aly Khan, the "fabulously wealthy, hard riding, fast driving, restless man of the world with a liking for parties and beautiful women" (NY Times, Feb. 7, 1958) for whom hi-fidelity was strictly for sound recordings; faithfulness to wives and lovers cramped his style.

There was Hon. Joan Guinness, Pamela Churchill Harriman, Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, countless other high-profile lovers, as well as the UCLA Pep Squad, the Pan American Airlines stewardess brigade, and a cast of gorgeous thousands from various Hollywood epics, take your pick. He needed a spreadsheet to keep track of the sheet spreads on his schedule.

Tittums Walking Out With The Parrot.

What's the book? In 1858, The Faithless Parrot by Charles H. Bennett was published by George Routledge and Co. of London as part of their New Toy Books series. The great, innovative color printer Edmund Evans engraved and printed the book's seven woodcuts based upon Bennett's designs.

It's the (one and only) cautionary tale of Paul Parrot, who, having seduced Tittums, a cat, from the arms of her lover, Fido, a dog (it's a modern relationship), and then two-timing her with the widow Mrs. Daw, a comely jackdaw,  gets his comeuppance when Tittums catches him in the act and he gets plucked within an inch of his life. 

The Parrot Courting The Jackdaw.

"Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the parrot mind" (Marcus Tullius Psittacine Cicero). It's a lesson Paul Parrot missed at Eton.

He's a votary of Oscar Wilde: "Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures” (The Picture of Dorian Gray).

Eaves-Droppers.

To which I can only reply, Double, double, toil and trouble: Bill Shakes knew what he was talking about - I date more than one bird at a time and I'm a nervous wreck;  I'm faithful secondary to woeful and that's fine with me. I once woke up with two scarlet macaws and an African Gray next to me in a sleazy nest. They must have slipped me a Rophie - I have no idea how I got there and, worse, have no memory of what was probably an ecstatic night but all l took away from it was feather-burn and a hangover. So much for bird of paradise wanna-be's.

It never ceases to amaze me how some kitties will fall for any suave hookbill with a silver-tongue, to wit:

The Parrot Exposed.

"One morning, when Tittums came in from a visit she had been paying her mamma, she was followed by a gentleman from the tropics, who, with all the impudence of his race, made himself quite at home, pressed Tittums’ paw to his heart, called her 'the loveliest of Cats,' asked her to oblige him with a song, which he had been told she could sing very sweetly, and never took the least notice of poor Fido, who was sitting in the corner. To tell the truth, poor Fido was very cross, and began to growl quite savagely; the more so when, to his dismay, he beheld the pleasure with which Tittums heard all this nonsense. He could not think what right the bold stranger had to come there unasked; for all that he had bright red and green feathers, a rakish, broad-brimmed hat, and a gold-headed walking-cane, he was not good-looking, that was very certain.

"But Tittums was very much struck by his appearance and bearing; his feathers were so pretty, he spoke so many languages, shrieked so terribly and in such a loud voice, had travelled so much, and was so struck by the beauty of Tittums, that, poor little Cat as she was, she ceased to care a button for faithful Fido, and kept all her sly glances for Mr. Paul Parrot.

“'Lovely Tittums,' said Mr. Paul, 'you must forget such upstart puppies as Fido. Listen to me—I am a traveller—I speak five languages,—I have a palace made of golden bars, within which is a perch fit for a king,—I have a pension of bread and milk and Barcelona nuts: all of which I will share with you. Tomorrow we will go for a trip into the field next to the house. Good-bye for the present, my dear Pussy Cat;' and he went away kissing his hand."

Pussycats, this is the bird your mother warned you about. Never trust a mister who kisses his own hand.

The Parrot Getting a Good Picking.

Because this is a typical mid-nineteenth century children's book it's a didactic moral tale that must conclude with Mr. Paul Parrot paying the wages of sin.

"As soon as Mrs. Daw was left alone with Paul, she began to upbraid him with his falseness. 'You vulgar, stuck-up, ugly, awkward deceiver! You have neither honesty enough to live by, nor wings enough to fly with.' Whereupon she jumped at him and gave him such a plucking as spoilt his good looks.

"Never after this was the Parrot able to hold up his head. Every one scorned him; even his golden palace turned out to be a brass cage; and for his misdeeds a chain was fastened round his leg. He was confined to a wooden perch, which, out of pure spite, he was always pecking."

No compulsive horn-dog parrot pecker one-liners. Sorry to disappoint. What am I, Henny Youngbird?

There was a parrot-babe knocking on my hotel room door all night! Finally, I let her out.
 

I know a parrot who's frank and earnest with pussycats. In Fresno, he's Frank and in Chicago he's Ernest.

Take my mate - please!

Rimshot.

I give The Faithless Parrot 5-Seeds, my highest rating. It's a true rarity; according to OCLC there are less than a dozen copies in institutional holdings worldwide. The Cotson Children's Library at Princeton only has it as reprinted within Routledge's 1865 compilation, The Comical Story Book With Comical Illustrations: Printed In Colours. It was separately reprinted by Routledge in 1870.

I'll have that filbert now.
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BENNETT, Charles H. The Faithless Parrot. Designed and Narrated by… London: G. Routledge and Co., n.d. [1858]. First edition. Quarto. 15, [1] pp. Seven full-page woodcuts engraved and printed in color by Edmund Evans.

Rear wrapper.

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Images courtesy of The Gutenberg Project, with our thanks.

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Of Related Interest:

The Writing Parrot On Rare Parrot Books.

Parrots Found In Rare Book On German Birds: The Writing Parrot Squawks.

The Shadow Of Your Smile Is A Monkey: The Caricatures Of Charles H. Bennett.
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Parrots Found In Rare Book On German Birds: The Writing Parrot Squawks

by Stephen J. Gertz

On command (his to me) once more, today's guest blogger is Albert the Writing Parrot, a thirty-five year old Yellow-Naped Amazon, Booktryst's mascot, my ward since his five-months old birthday, and, pathetically, my most successful long-term relationship. He knows more about parrot books than I do. If his writing voice sounds similar to mine do not be surprised. He is, after all, a parrot  - SJG.

Psittacus Albini
(Cacatua galerita fitzroy)
Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo.
   

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather: parrots in the Fatherland.

Greetings, bibliophiles and parrot-freaks, I'm Albert, the Yellow-Naped Amazon, who was once given a pen to render into plastic confetti but discovered, to my amazement and Gertz's, that when held in zygodactyl foot made comprehensible prose when applied to a sheet of paper  provided for my amusement. No bird-brain, I picked-up a thing or two while reading the newspaper on the bottom of my cage despite its crude punctuation with the end product of digestion.

Psittacus Rufus vertice nigro
(Lorius Domicellus)
Purple-Capped Lory

The other day Gertz presented me with another rare antiquarian book on birds for review, Vorstellung der Vögel in Deutschland und beiläufig auch einiger Fremden nach ihrer Eigenschaften beschrieben by Johann Leonhard Frisch (1666-1743).  It's a book on the birds of Germany originally published in Berlin, 1733, and issued in parts at irregular intervals over the next thirty years, the final section published in 1763. It’s considered to be the first great German color-plate bird book. Gertz brought home a copy of the third and most complete edition, a folio of fourteen parts in one volume issued 1817-1820 with 255 gorgeous hand-colored plates.

Psittacus viridis alis capite liteo
(Amazona barbadensis barbadensis)
Yellow-Shouldered Amazon

A book on the birds of Germany. What, you may ask, are parrots doing in this otherwise delightful strudel in print? Exotic, tropical birds like parrots are typically found in Central and South America, the Caribbean, India, the South Pacific (where they engage in Happy Talk on Bali Hai-Ai-Ai), parts of Africa, or as escapees on the lam in Southern California and San Francisco. Sightings in the Black Forest, Bavaria, Brandenburg, Bad Arolsen, Bad Bentheim, Bad Bergzabern, Bad Berka, Bad Berleburg, Bad Berneck im Fichtelgebirge, Bad Bevensen, Bad Blankenburg, Bad Bramstedt, Bad Breisig, Bad Brückenau, Bad Camberg, Bad Colberg-Heldburg, and Bad Düben through Bad Wünnerberg are non-existent. Yes, there's a whole lotta Bad in Germany but it's not as bad as it seems, though hamburgers in Heidelberg are nothing to write home about. As a natural habitat for parrots, however, it's definitely the opposite of good. I was once there in January and froze my pecker off. A bird that can't peck soon goes hungry but what bird eats blechküchen, anyway? Gott in Himmel! Gimme a bagel with a shmear of cream cheese.

Psittacus veridis fronte albo collo rubro

But enough about brunch at Nate n' Al's in Beverly Hills with a flock of ancient Hollywood dodos gumming schmaltz herring.

So, anyway, German linguist, entomologist and ornithologist Johann Leonhard Frisch began to publish Vorstellung der Vögel in Deutschland und beiläufig auch einiger Fremden nach ihrer Eigenschaften beschrieben in 1733. Following his death, the book was continued by his sons Leopold, who handled the text, and Ferdinand Helfreich and Philip Jakob who took care of the engraving and coloring of the plates, while a member of the third generation, Johann’s grandson Johann Christoph, created the final thirty plates. In 1763, the year the last part was issued, a second edition of the entire work appeared in Berlin from publisher Bey Friedrich Wilhelm Birnstiel.

Psittacus Rufus alis viridis
(Lorius garrulus garrulus).
Chattering Lory.

Here's the skinny on it: “One of the most enjoyable of all bird books but rare...Frisch's 'Vorstellung der Vogel' is not only an attractive book but it is very, very seldom seen. And there is no doubt whatever that this makes it much more exciting, when we do see it, or possess it" (Sitwell, et al, Fine Bird Books 1700-1900, p. 67).

How rare is it? Rarer than a rocky island off the coast of Peru without guano. (NB: bird guano has a fertilizer analysis of 11%-16% nitrogen - the majority of which is uric acid, FYI - 8%-12% equivalent phosphoric acid, and 2%-3% equivalent potash. Thank me the next time this comes up in casual conversation).

¿Quánto cuesta? When Gertz told me how much this copy of the third edition was going for I instantly moulted all my feathers. Looking like a plucked anorexic dwarf chicken with prosthetic hooked pecker, I exclaimed in a screech heard all the way to Swaziland, "$119, 045!?!"

After repeating the exalted sum seventeen times (because repetition is reflexive and what we parrots do) I asked him what a complete copy of the first edition is worth. No copies have come to auction within the last thirty-eight years and who knows how much farther back than that: Gertz accidentally left his fifteen-volume set of the ABPC Index 1923-1975 in a nightclub while partying with Rihanna, perusing it while she danced a wild tarantella on a tabletop, spliff insouciantly hanging from her lips while Chris Brown desperately clung to her hips. Still, he estimates a 1st ed. to go for $150K-$175K, maybe more. But what does Chris Brown know about rare books?

Polly wants a crack at it! No chance.

Psittacus Carolinensis
(Conuropsis carolinensis)
The Carolina Parakeet,
the only North American parrot, now extinct.

Alright, alright, alright, already, what are parrots doing in a book on the birds of Germany? it turns out that the third edition was augmented with a Supplement featuring some non-Aryan foreign species, I suppose to demonstrate the superiority of ornithology's master race by comparison. I tend to think, however, that a color-plate book of German birds needs a tonic to offset dull, drab, and dour Teutonic avifauna like Herr Schwartz's Brown Eagle below, hence the vivid splash of psittaciformes.

Der Schwartz braune Adler. Aquila melanaetus.

This copy also contains Verzeichniß der in Ferdinand Helfreich Frisch Vorstellung der Vögel in Deutschland...abgebildete Säugethiere und Vögel, nach der 13ten Ausgabe des von J.G. Gemelin bearbeiteten Linne’schen Natursystems geordnet (Berlin: 1819), an extra twelve-page Linnean index for those who appreciate fine linneans with 400 thread-count. 

Upcoming: my review of Kim Jong-un's new book, The Juche-Inspired Socialist Birds of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Are the Masters of the Country's Development: A Field Guide For The Education Of The Masses Yearning To Eat. It's a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection.

In answer to Angel Louy, Ph.D of Stamps, Arkansas: I know why the caged bird writes: the Met turned me down, the fools. Luciano Pavarotti? You haven't lived until you've heard me as Canio croon the intro verse of Vesti la Giubba - obviously written with a parrot in mind* - with typically psychotic psittacine chuckles passing for sorrowfully ironic laughter: 

Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio,
non so più quel che dico,
e quel che faccio!
Eppur è d'uopo, sforzati!
Bah! Sei tu forse un pappagallo?

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

 Lo sono un pagliaccio!
 Lo sono un pagliaccio!
 Lo sono un pagliaccio!
 Lo sono un pagliaccio!
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*Act! While in delirium,
I no longer know what I say,
or what I do!
And yet it's necessary... make an effort!
Bah! Are you not a parrot?
I am a clown!

With apologies to Leoncavallo.
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FRISCH, Johann Leonhard. Vorstellung der Vögel in Deutschland und beiläufig auch einiger Fremden nach ihrer Eigenschaften beschrieben.Berlin, Nicolaische Buchhandlung, 1817[-1820]. Third and most complete edition. 14 parts in 1 volume. Folio. With engraved frontispiece with a portrait of Johann Leonhard and Ferdinand Helfreich Frisch, 255 contemporaneously hand-colored engraved plates (31 x 20 cm.

Anker 155. Nissen  ZBI 339. Wood, p. 349. Zimmer I, pp. 233-234. Sitwell, p. 67, 76.
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Images courtesy of Asher Rare Books / Antiquariat Forum, currently offering this title, with our thanks.
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Of Related Interest:

The Writing Parrot On Rare Parrot Books.

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The Bauhaus Bird Paradise of Carl Ernst Hinkefuss

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1929, graphic designer Carl Ernst Hinkefuss (1881-1970) published, Mein Vogel Paradies (My Bird Paradise), a tie-bound modern block book for children featuring stunning color lithographs depicting abstracted forms of birds reduced to their fundamental forms, accompanied by verse about each individual bird, both text (printed in silver ink) and images printed on black paper. A two-page introduction by Hinkefuss encourages children to create their own pictures based upon his simple designs.

Carl Ernst Hinkefuss was a popular Bauhaus illustrator known for modernist graphic design work that integrated art with commercial values. He did a great deal of advertising design for Hamburg Amerika oceanliners. Hinkefuss was also the editor of the design periodical Qualität, 1920-1932.

He "trained as a painter, graphic artist, and architect at the Königliche Kunstschule and the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin at the turn of the century. While still a student, Hinkefuss became interested in the idea of artists collaborating with the business world, and after graduation he became a commercial graphic designer. From 1905 to early 1910, he worked in the advertising and publicity departments of several firms in Berlin and Dessau, and then later in 1910 set out as an independent publicist in Berlin" (Online Archive of California). 

He ultimately partnered with Wilhelm Deffke (1887-1950) in Wilhemwerk, their commercial design house.

Prospectus for Mein Vogel Paradies, 1929.

According to the prospectus for the book, it was produced using a fifteen color offset-lithography process. The prospectus also mentions a gift box but, apparently, it was never produced; no copies in a publisher's gift box have ever been seen.

Mein Vogel Paradies is an extremely rare book. OCLC/KVK note only four copies in institutional holdings worldwide. According to the ABPC Index, 1923-2011, no copies have ever come to auction. Fine copies, if you can find them, now sell in the low five figures.

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HINKEFUSS, Carl Ernst. Mein Vogel Paradies. Gesamtwerk von Karl Ernst Hinkefuss. [Berlin: Verlag International GMBH / Internationale Propaganda für Qualitatserzeugnisse], 1929. First edition, limited to 1500 copies signed by the artist. Quarto (11 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.). [14]  leaves on black paper printed in silver and fourteen other colors. Color lithographs. Color pictorial wrappers side-stitched with black string.

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Book images courtesy of Aleph-Bet Books, with our thanks.

Image of prospectus courtesy of Wilhelmwerke, with our appreciation.
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The Writing Parrot On Rare Parrot Books

by Albert

Today's guest blogger is Albert the Writing Parrot, a thirty-four year old Yellow-Naped Amazon, Booktryt's mascot, my ward since his five-months old birthday, and, pathetically, my most successful long-term relationship. He knows more about these books than I do. If his writing voice sounds similar to mine do not be surprised. He is, after all, a parrot  - SJG.

I'm delighted to take pen in zygodactyl foot and contribute to Booktryst today. Thirty-fours years after Gertz tried to teach me how to say, "I want a great big pizza," I'm pleased to report what will soon become apparent: My vocabulary has dramatically increased, and my diction is poifect.

Grand Eclectus Parrots, male (L) and female (R).

It has been my experience that all parrot lovers are a little tetched in the head.  You say "Hello" to a parrot freak and they get all gushy, "Oh, he talked!" like it's the eighth wonder of the world and you're the first parrot in history to throw a vocal crumb to a human. Psittacosis, aka Parrot Fever, is not confined to bacterial activity; parrot people are omnivorous, fervent and  gentle suckers who will consume any parrot-related product, art, toy, or miscellaneous tshoschke. Money is no object.

Alexandrine Parakeet.

Yet a parrot lover who owns a $6,000 hyacinthine macaw will not spring for first editions of the great parrot books; they go for the reprints, of which there are many. I don't get it. They'd rather spend the money to acquire another parrot, as if they were collecting books. Hey, I'm a parrot and I like parrots as much as the next guy but tell me, when was the last time a book left droppings on your shoulder? Does a book perch on your fork and hijack food on the way to your mouth?? Chew the furniture? We're like dogs with wings only our bite is worse than our bark (though my bark is poifect Pekingese).

Rose-Hill Parakeet.

Then again, how many books can fly, psychotically chuckle, or demand Italian comfort food?

Hyacinthine Macaw.

Edward Lears's magnificent Illustrations of the Family Psittacidae, or Parrots (1832);  Selby's Natural History of Parrots (1836); W.T. Greens's Parrots in Captivity (1884); the Duke of Bedford's Parrots and Parrot-Like Birds in Aviculture (1929);  Joseph Forshaw and William T. Cooper's modern classic Parrots of the World (Melbourne, 1973); Rosemary Low's The Parrots of South America (1972), Parrots Their Care and Breeding (1980), Amazon Parrots (1983), and Lories and Lorikeets, the Brush-Tongued Parrots (1977); even Stroud's Digest on the Diseases of Birds (1939) by Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz; and many more. Don't get me started on the great ornithology and natural history color-plate books featuring members of my fine feathered family, eg., William Jardine's Naturalist Library (1836). I've seen most all, antiquarian through modern.

Blue-Breasted Lory.

C'mon, parrot peeps, get crackin' and start collectin'! [Editor's note: translated into parrotese, this may be interpreted as a gentle nudge or emphatic nip to exposed flesh].

Leadbetter's Cockatoo.

The other day Gertz shows me The Speaking Parrots (1884) by Dr. Karl Russ (1833-1899), the first translation into English of  Die sprechenden papageien. Ein hand- und lehrbuch (Berlin: L. Gerschel, 1882), that book the first separate edition of volume three,  Die Papageien, of Russ' Die fremdländischen Stubenvögel, his ten-volume series (1878-1881) originally published in Magdeburg. Never seen it. Never looked at the color plates, never read it. I like it, and give it 5-Seeds, my highest rating, despite the fact that the otherwise stunning chromolithographs are not completely faithful to the true colors of the birds. I'm pleased it was translated; I've got enough problems with English, fuggetabout sprechenden Deutsche.

Yellow-Crowned Conure.

• • •

I want to bring to your attention one of the strangest works in the annals of parrot literature, found in the August, 1981 issue of The Magazine of the Parrot Society, a British journal for the parrot-obssessed. The Brits are even more loony about parrots than Americans so, naturally, it accepted the following article by a feather-brained Yank.

I witnessed the incident at Casa Gertz leading to up to this therapy which,  performed on a duck or not, screamed quack. While Ba-Ba, a Tres Marias Amazon and the bane of my existence,  cockatiels Felix and Oscar, and The Canary With No Name watched, Gerald McBoing-Boing, a Yellow-Backed Lory, insanely attacked Pépe, a Scarlet Macaw, four times his size in another weight class entirely. Macaw bit toe of Lory. Lory didn't quit. Lory had to be separated from macaw before macaw ate lunch. Toe required amputation. Gertz, who received his veterinary degree via mail order from a diploma-mill in Ulan Bator while working as a physical therapy aide for a coked-up PT at a health club in Los Angeles, performed the procedure and post-surgical rehab. Gertz was a prodigy; damn if it didn't work! He showed me a copy of the article when it was published. After ripping it to shreds I was hungry. 

"I want a great big pizza."

Four years after Gertz hopelessly began teaching it to me the phrase finally emerged from my keratin lips. But I haven't said it since and have no plans to do so; ha-ha! I've moved on. I'm an autodidact; who needs Gertz? My ace impression of John Moschitta's speed-speaking FedEx commercials and whistling of Flight of the Bumble Bee are the talk of the parrot world. My friends and colleagues can't stop squawking about it.

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RUSS, Dr. Karl. The Speaking Parrots: A Scientific Manual. Translated by Leonora Schultze and Revised by Dr. Karl Russ. London: L. Upcott Gill, 1884. First edition in English. Octavo. viii, 296 pp.  Half-title. Eight chromolithograph plates including frontispiece, nine b&w plates, misc.illustrations. Advertisements at front and end. Publisher's pictorial cloth.

Nissen 804.

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Rara Avis, Rari Libri, Rare Man

by Linda Hedrick

John James Audubon (1785-1851)
Oil on canvas by John Syme, 1826
Currently hanging in the White House.

John James Audubon, a Haitian-born man raised in France, had a vision. One that resulted in a monumental and important work – Birds of America.

Carolina Pigeon
(now called Mourning Dove)

He had loved birds and nature as a child, and was encouraged by his father to explore and draw what he saw. He was reported to be quite charming, played the flute and violin, learned to ride and to fence, but loved roaming the woods best.

White Gerfalcons

Although his father had planned for his son to be a seaman, the young Audubon was not fond of navigation or the math required, and failed his officer’s qualification test. He also got seasick easily. His father managed to secure a fake passport and sent him to America in 1803, in order to avoid being drafted in the Napoleonic wars.

Virginian Partridge (Northern Bobwhite)
under attack by a young red-shouldered hawk.

Audubon did well in various family businesses, but really relished his time outdoors, hunting, fishing and drawing. He had a great respect for Native Americans, and spent time with local tribes learning their ways of hunting and their views on nature. He married his neighbor’s daughter, Lucy Bakewell, with whom he shared common interests. They lived in Kentucky and spent time together exploring the local countryside.

Roseate Spoonbill

In 1812, after Congress declared war with Great Britain, Audubon went to Philadelphia and became an American citizen. Upon returning to Kentucky, he found that his entire collection - over two hundred drawings - had been destroyed by rats. Despondent and downhearted, he decided to redo his work, but this time even better.

Paridae:  (clockwise from top right, in pairs)
Psaltriparus minimus, Parus atricapillus, Parus rufescens

His methods for drawing birds were based on his extensive observations from the field. He first killed the birds with fine shot, then wired them into natural poses. He painted the birds in their natural settings, often as though in the midst of motion. 

The Greater Flamingo

Working primarily with layers of watercolor and sometimes gouache, he added pastels or colored chalk for softness. Audubon drew all the birds life-size and placed smaller birds in settings with branches, flowers, fruit and berries. He grouped several species in some drawings on the same page to show contrast. His poses were contrived to reveal as much of bird anatomy as possible, achieving both scientific and artistic efficacy.

Snowy Heron or White Egret

He took his new collection of drawings to England in 1826. American printers had not been very responsive to his enthusiastic plans to publish life-size prints of hundreds of bird species made from engraved copper plates and hand-colored.  

Mallard Ducks

Birds of America consists of 435 prints printed on sheets measuring 39 by 26 inches. The printing costs were $115,640 (over $2,000,000 by today’s rates). Besides arranging for the production of his grand opus, he tirelessly promoted it.  He raised the money from advance subscriptions, oil painting commissions, exhibitions, and even the sale of animal skins from his hunts.

Blue Jays

Over fifty colorists were hired to apply each color in an assembly line. The original edition was engraved in aquatint. Robert Havell took over the project when the first ten plates of engraver W. H. Lizars were found subpar. By the 1830s, lithography replaced the aquatint process. He called the new size the double elephant folio since it was double elephant paper size.

Anna's Hummingbird

Criticized for not ordering the plates in Linnaean order (like a scientific treatise), he was more interested in providing a visual tour for the reader. King George IV was a subscriber along with others of nobility. He gave a demonstration of how he propped the birds with wire to arrange their poses. A student at the time, Charles Darwin, was at that demonstration. Darwin quotes Audubon three times in The Origin of Species and in later works.

Golden Eagle

Audubon has had a vast influence on natural history and ornithology. His high standards set the bar for future works. Among his accomplishments were the discovery of twenty-five new species and twelve subspecies. In his journals, he warned about loss of habitats and over-hunting. Birds that have become extinct, including the Carolina Parakeet, Passenger Pigeon, and Great Auk, are only known to us from his prints.

Ivory-billed Woodpecker

His next work was a sequel entitled Ornithological Biographies, written with a Scottish ornithologist, William MacGillivray. Both books were published between 1827 and 1839, but separately to avoid having to provide a copy of Birds of America to the Crown libraries, as required by law for any books with text.

Ruffled Grouse

In 1839-1844, he published an octavo edition of Birds of America with an additional 65 plates. These were approximate 10-1/2 by 6-3/4 inches.  The earliest editions were bound in seven volumes, editions after 1865 in eight volumes.  This edition was first published in fascicles (parts) in an effort to make it more affordable, and therefore accessible to libraries and to more people. Each fascicle cost $1, and the entire set cost $100.  Once collected, most subscribers had them bound in volumes.

Fascicle of Part 4

The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, his final work which focused on documenting mammals, was written in collaboration with Rev. John Bachman, who supplied most of the scientific text. This was completed by his sons and son-in-law posthumously.

Snowy Owl

John Woodhouse Audubon devoted himself entirely to continuing the work of his father. They worked together on the series The Quadrapeds of North America (the “Viviparous” was dropped), but when John James became too ill to continue, John Woodhouse ended up doing most of the drawings. Because of the dangers of working closely with live animals, caged or dead ones were used as models.  Since this was more unwieldy than staging bird poses, their animal paintings were not as successful, and are rather gloomy.

Mountain Brook Minks, 1848 by John Woodhouse Audubon.
Image courtesy of National Museum of Wildlife Art

Despite being under the shadow of his father, John Woodhouse’s contributions are valuable. His brother, Victor Gifford Audubon, also continued the family tradition of wildlife painting, but is the least known of the Audubon family.

Passenger Pigeons
(now extinct)

Lucy Audubon sold all 435 of the original watercolors to the New York Historical Society, after her husband’s death. Desperate for money, she later sold all but 80 of the original copper plates to the Phelps Dodge Corporation, who melted them down and sold them for scrap.

Sotheby's Mary Engleheart shown with copy of Birds of America to be
auctioned December 7th.  Photo by Pitarakis/AP.

Considered the world’s most expensive book, one of the 119 copies still extant will be available to the highest bidder this December 7, at Sotheby’s auction. The last time a copy became available was at an auction at Christie’s in 2000. That copy went for $8.8 million, setting the record for an auctioned printed book. The currently available book comes from the estate of a book collector, Major Frederick Fermor-Hesketh, the 2nd Baron Hesketh, who died in 1955. Of the 119 remaining copies of the book, only a few are in private hands, the rest (estimated to be 108) belong to libraries, universities, and museums. 

Photograph of John James Audubon just prior to his death
by photographer Charles DeForest Fredricks

John James Audubon was a talented artist and salesman, whose exacting efforts to record the creatures he loved yielded one of the most impressive books ever made. A unique man, he envisioned his dreams and brought them to fruition. That is certainly worth millions of dollars.

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Images courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, except as noted.
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