In 1803 a handsome young Frenchman arrived in
America eager to explore a new land rich in promise and boundless
opportunity. That young man was John James Audubon.
Intent upon establishing himself as a successful
businessman, Audubon opened a small general store in Louisville,
but this and several other attempts at commerce yielded nothing
but debt. His love for roaming the wilderness and painting birds
proved too distracting. Finally, in the summer of 1819, Audubon
chose art over business, a decision which proved to have
far-reaching consequences.
For the next 20 years Audubon labored in relative
obscurity until The Birds of America reached completion.
Containing 435 life-size, hand-colored aquatint etchings, this
single work established the standard for wildlife art. To this
day, it remains without equal in scope, grandeur, and overall
artistic excellence.
In 1839, shortly after he had completed the first
Folio edition of his great work, Audubon saw that a smaller
edition would solve a number of problems inherent in the Folio
edition, the greatest of these being its enormous cost. Each of
the 435 hand-colored, etched-copper plates was printed on the
finest Whatman paper measuring a full 40 by 30 inches; the cost of
a complete four-volume set, issued in 87 parts of 5 plates per
part, was a staggering $1,000.00. As a consequence, the number of
Folio sets of the Birds of America never exceeded 200, and many
subscribers never completed their sets.
Audubon wished his work to be more popular, and
reasoned that a smaller, more manageable edition would be less
expensive to produce and therefore much more affordable. He
decided to employ the Philadelphia lithographer J. T. Bowen to
print and hand-color the plates. The images for the Octavo Birds
of America were reduced from the Folio plates--probably with the
aid of a camera lucida--and drawn directly onto lithographic
stones. Bowen was the finest of the early American lithographers,
attracting Audubon's attention with his brilliant colored
lithographs for the McKenney-Hall History of the Indian Tribes of
North America. At one point, Bowen employed as many as twenty
colorists, each one seated at a long table, applying oil-based
paints with meticulous care--often under the watchful eye of
Audubon himself. The Octavo edition was also issued to subscribers
in parts, each part containing 5 hand-colored plates and a
descriptive text, each part selling for one dollar. The complete
seven-volume edition contained 100 parts (500 plates); hitherto
undescribed species were appended to the end of volume VII.
Volumes I-V were simultaneously published by J. J. Audubon, New
York, and J. B. Chevalier, Philadelphia; volumes VI and VII were
published by J. J. Audubon, New York and Philadelphia. All plates
for the first Octavo edition were executed by Bowen, and the
letterpress printing of the text was the work of E. G. Dorsey,
also of Philadelphia.
The first Octavo edition was finally completed in
1844, and Audubon's personal list of subscribers indicates that
1,199 sets were eventually printed. This edition was followed by
five subsequent editions, the last being issued in 1871. Of these,
only the first edition was personally supervised by Audubon, who
died in January of 1851.
The text and plates for this National Audubon
Society Anniversary Edition have been carefully reproduced
directly from Audubon's original first editions. They appear here
in their entirety, in the exact sequence as when first issued 135
years ago. However, to make this edition more compact and thus
more manageable, each of the five volumes contains two of
Audubon's volumes within a single binding. Not a single color
plate has been omitted, not a word of text has been deleted from
these timeless American classics.
