John Gould and Riechter Earl of Derby’s Parrakeet Birds of Australia 1840s

Description

This is one of 4 originals shortly going for international auction..

The Birds of Australia was a book written by John Gould and published in seven volumes between 1840 and 1848, with a supplement published between 1851 and 1869.[1] It was the first comprehensive survey of the birds of Australia and included descriptions of 681 species, 328 of which were new to Western science and were first described by Gould.[2]

Gould and his wife Elizabeth née Coxen travelled to Australia from England in 1838 to prepare the book. They spent a little under two years collecting specimens for the book. John travelled widely and made extensive collections of Australian birds and other fauna. Elizabeth, who had illustrated several of his earlier works, made hundreds of drawings from specimens for publication in The Birds of Australia[3]

The plates of the book were produced by lithography, and have been hand-coloured by Gabriel Bayfield’s studio.[4] Elizabeth produced 84 plates before she died in 1841, Edward Lear produced one, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins contributed one and the remaining 595 plates were produced by H. C. Richter from Elizabeth’s drawings and were published under his name.[5][6] The accompanying letterpress descriptions of the birds are authored by John Gould and were printed by the firm R. & J. E. Taylor.[7]

Birds of Australia was issued in parts to subscribers – in all there were 250 subscribers, and so 250 sets of the seven-volume work were printed.[5] Complete sets of original volumes recently sold at auction for more than A$350,000.[8] It wwas published in a folio format that measures 57cm in height. Of the original 250, 175 of those are now accounted for in institutional collections, and the remaining 75 are in private hands or have been broken up to be sold as individual prints.