Item #130565 Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands. John GOULD.
Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands
Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands
Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands
Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands
Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands
Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands

Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands

Melbourne, Lansdowne Editions, 1979 (facsimile edition)/ 1837-38.

Imperial folio, vi, 13 pages with 2 illustrations (appendices new to this edition) plus 20 full-page colour plates each with a page of descriptive text (and a blank leaf separating them).

Cloth with an oval portrait of John Gould mounted on a leather panel on the front cover; a fine copy (still in the original slightly used mailing carton).

Number 446 of 500 copies signed by Allan McEvey, Curator of Birds at the National Museum of Victoria. McEvey has supplied the detailed appendices, published here for the first time, in which he 'traces the complicated bibliographical history of the work, and provides invaluable information on recorded copies, loose plates and original drawings'. In 1837-38, John Gould published two parts (reproduced here) of a proposed larger work on the birds of Australia. He then spent two years in Australia. On his return to England in 1840, he cancelled the two parts already published, and began and completed his magnum opus on the subject. Needless to say, the originals of these cancelled parts are very rare.

Item #130565

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