The Birds of Australia
The Birds of Australia ( German Die Vögel Australiens ) is a work by John Gould , which was published in seven volumes between 1840 and 1848. It was the first complete survey of the birds of Australia and included descriptions of 681 species. 328 of them were new to the scientific community and were first described by Gould.
Gould and his wife Elizabeth , with their eldest child Henry, the collector John Gilbert , a nephew and two servants, traveled from England to Hobart, Australia in May 1838 , where they arrived in September to prepare the book. Their two youngest children stayed with Elizabeth's mother. The Goulds spent a little less than two years collecting copies for the book. John traveled widely and made expensive collections of Australian birds (a total of 800 specimens, nests and eggs from more than 70 species of birds and the skeletons of all basic shapes) and 70 quadrupeds. He made notes on the individual species and their habitats and accidentally discovered the budgiein two ways, as a main meal (he was known to have eaten numerous of them) and as a pet (he brought several couples back to England in 1840, where they became very popular). Elizabeth, who had illustrated some of his earlier works, made hundreds of drawings of copies for publication in The Birds of Australia .
The plates in the book were made using lithography , Elizabeth made 84 plates before she died in 1841. By Edward Lear and Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins each a plate came from. The remaining 595 plates were made by Henry Constantine Richter (1821-1902) based on Elizabeth's drawings and published under his name.
250 copies of the seven-volume work were printed. Subscribers to the work had to wait over eight years (18 for the supplement) before they could bind the seven volumes. A complete copy of the original volumes were at an auction in 1996 Christie's in Melbourne for over 350,000 AUD auctioned.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology: Women's Work. Portraits of 12 Scientific Illustrators from the 17th to the 21st Century: Elizabeth Gould 1804–1841 ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ^ A b Michelle Hetherington: John Gould's Birds of Australia . In: Peter Cochrane (ed.): Remarkable Occurrences: The National Library of Australia's First 100 Years, 1901-2001 . National Library of Australia.
- ↑ Kenneth Spencer Research Library: John Gould, his birds and beasts . Chapter John and Elizabeth Gould .
- ^ Fiona Kells, Stuart Kells: The Australian Book Auction Records . In: Library and Information Science Research: Electronic Journal 10 (2000), Issue 2 of September 30, 2000, ISSN 1058-6768 .
Web links
- John Gould: The Birds of Australia: in seven volumes by John Gould , available online at the National Library of Australia.
- Julie Gardham: July 2005: The Birds of Australia. John Gould. London: 1840–1869 , Glasgow University Library. Special Collections Department. Book of the Month.