Audubon's Birds of America
New York, Abbeville Press, 1981 [first thus].
Baby elephant folio (389 × 310 mm), 435 colour plates (including some double-page folding plates) by Audubon plus lengthy introductions by the Petersons to the eleven groups of birds (containing a small duotone reproduction of all 435 colour plates) and a full-colour illustrated survey of 'the work of other major North American bird artists and illustrators'.
Quarter black leather (lettered in gilt on the spine) and plain oatmeal cloth; a fine copy in the matching cloth-bound slipcase with a colour-pictorial paper panel on one side.
'The Audubon Society Baby Elephant Folio' differs from earlier editions of the work in a number of substantial ways. Not least, the plates 'are organized not in the order that Audubon produced them for his subscribers but phylogenetically; that is, in a modern scientific classification sequence that somewhat parallels the evolutionary history of a genetically related group of organisms'. The appendix includes a 'two-way Concordance relating our phylogenetic numbers to the numbering of plates in the original Elephant Folio' ('A Note About This Edition').
Item #143080
Price (AUD):
$750.00