AUDUBON, John James (1785–1851). The Birds of America, from Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories. New York: George R. Lockwood, [1870].
8 volumes, royal 8vo (262 x 168 mm). Half-titles, 500 HAND-COLORED LITHOGRAPH PLATES after Audubon by W. E. Hitchcock, R. Trembly and others, printed and colored by J. T. Bowen, wood-engraved anatomical diagrams in text. ORIGINAL PUBLISHER’S BLIND-STAMPED BROWN MOROCCO, 6 compartments with 5 raised bands, gilt–lettering in 3 compartments, blindstamped centerpieces in remainder, all edges gilt, gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers (each discretely recased preserving original endpapers, else a fine set). Provenance: George H. Wellman (possibly an original subscriber with his name gilt–stamped at the foot of each volumes); Carl Sumner Knopf (engraved bookplate), president of Willamette University (1941–1942) and was considered at the time one of the great American scholars in the fields of Old Testament interpretation and Middle Eastern archaeology.
EARLY OCTAVO EDITION IN THE DELUXE PUBLISHER’S BINDING. Audubon’s double–elephant folio edition of The Birds of America (1827–1838) established his reputation as the greatest ornithological artist of his time. Though that edition was published in London to ensure the quality of the plates, he employed the Philadelphia firm of J. T. Bowen to produce this more commercially viable octavo edition under the close supervision of his sons. The original subscription price was $100, and its commercial success granted Audubon financial security. The octavo edition adds 65 new images for a total of 500 plates, making it “the most extensive color plate book produced in America up to that time” (Reese). George Lockwood bound the Birds in eight, rather than seven, volumes and printed the plates whenever possible from the same stone and stereotype plates made in the 1840s and 1850s.
This Lockwood edition represents the last octavo edition printed from these original stones; they were destroyed sometime after 1870 by a fire in a Philadelphia warehouse. Tyler, Audubon’s Great National Work, pp. 129, 165. References for the first octavo edition: Ayer/Zimmer, p. 22; Bennett, p. 5; McGill/Wood, p. 208; Nissen IVB 51; Reese, American Color Plate Books 34; Reese, Stamped with a National Character 35; Sabin 2364.