Books and Manuscripts

Edinburgh: Daniel Lizars, and W.H. Lizars/London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, et al., and S. Highly/Dublin: Hodges & McArthur, and W. Curry, (1826-43). Four volumes bound in three. First edition. 4to. Illustrated with 207 hand-colored engraved plates (as called for), by Jardine, Selby, John Gould, Edward Lear, R. Mitford, A.F. Rolfe, James Stewart, and J. Thompson, with tissue-guards; bound without the uncolored duplicates of each plate in Vols. I-III. Volumes I-III bound in three-quarter red morocco over faux red straight-grain morocco, stamped in blind and in gilt, extremities rubbed and lightly worn; all edges gilt; scattered light foxing to text; light offsetting from plates. Vol. IV bound in full red morocco, elaborately stamped in gilt, joints and extremities rubbed; all edges gilt; yellow endpapers; by T. Sowler, Manchester; foxing to title-page and Contents leaves; light spotting to text and plates. Armorial book-plate of R.R. Whitehead on front paste-down of first two volumes, armorial book-plate of J.D. Whitehead on front paste-down of third volume; illustrated book-plate of American sporting collector William Mitchell Van Winkle on front free endpaper of each volume. Sitwell, Fine Bird Books, pp. 108-109; Zimmer pp. 322-324; Wood, p. 405; Anker 222

First edition of this celebrated and important work on ornithology, rare in all four volumes. “Constituting chiefly a series of beautiful hand-colored plates with explanatory text of birds of many regions by well-known artists, among them Lear, Gould, and the principal text contributors themselves” (Wood). Focusing on non-British bird species, Illustrations of Ornithology was envisioned as a complement to English ornithologist and botanist Prideaux John Selby's Illustrations of British Ornithology, and marked the beginning of Scottish naturalist Sir William Jardine and Selby's decades-long fruitful relationship on ornithological works.

At the time of publication, few works were available that illustrated the great scope of birds from around the world. Seeking to remedy this, Jardine and Selby built off of the authoritative, although limited, works of the day—John Latham's A General Synopsis of Birds (1781-85) and A General History of Birds (1821-28), as well as George Shaw's Vivarium Naturae, or the Naturalist's Miscellany (1789-1813)—to show the great variety of birds from Africa, Asia, and North and South America. In pursuit of this, Jardine and Selby culled specimens from a wide variety of sources, including the British Museum, The University of Edinburgh, the Linnean Society of London, the East India Company, as well as from foreign naturalists from North and South America, the Caribbean, and Africa.

The work was issued in two series, with the first series (Vols. I-III in the first two volumes of this set) comprised of 10 parts published between 1826 and 1835. According to Jardine and Selby's "Note" at the end of Vol. III it was terminated because "some of our co-operators hav[e] expressed a desire to be freed from their connection with these Illustrations." A new series was issued two years later, in nine parts, between 1837 and 1843 (this sets third volume).