Selby, Prideaux John

Illustrations of British Ornithology. Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars, 1833 (text volumes); London: Henry G. Bohn, 1841 (plate volumes)



Together 4 volumes, comprising 2 text volumes, 8vo (8 3/8 x 5 ¼ in.; 212 x 134 mm) and 2 plate volumes, folio (26 ¼ x 21 1/16 in.; 668 x 535 mm). Two engraved titles with handcolored vignettes, 4 uncolored plates of details, 218 handcolored etched plates after Selby, R. Mitford, and W. Jardine by Selby, Jardine, and W. H. Lizars; titles creased as is plate I:55 and uncolored plate I:IV, captions shaved with loss on plates II: 76 & 87, outer margin of plate II:10 shaved into image area, small repaired tear to upper outer margin of plate II:101, some marginal finger soiling, slight foxing on first and last leaf of text volumes. Contemporary green half-morocco over marbled boards; plate volumes rebacked with original spines laid down.

R.G. Lumley (9th Earl of Scarborough, bookplate) — Hugh Thomas Fattorini (1934-2005, bookplate, his sale Christie's 25 October 1995, lot 40)

Ayer/Zimmer 571; Fine Bird Books 141; Jackson, Etchings 201-213; Jackson, Lithography 33, 51;  McGill/Wood 561; Mullens & Swann, Bibliography of British Ornithology (1917), p. 520; Nissen IVB 853

[Selby's] greatest work will ever be deemed his celebrated illustrations of british ornithology ... our english equivalent of Audubon's great work" (Mullens & Swann). This is the Bohn reprint, first published at irregular intervals in Edinburgh in 1834. Where watermarks appear in the plates, they read "J Whatman|1842" suggesting a late issue. The text volumes are respectively second and first editions.

Prideaux John Selby (1788-1867) "was very gifted as an artist, and the two volumes of Illustrations of British Ornithology are outstandingly beautiful. In many people's estimation, the clarity and crispness of his figures gives them an austere beauty that is lacking in the pretty lithographs of H. L. Meyer's and John Gould's books ... The cool, classical quality of Selby's plates belongs to the age of elegance and could have never been achieved by the Victorian John Gould. Selby's bird figures were the most accurate delineations of British birds to that date, and the livliest. After so many books with small, stiff bird portraits, this new atlas with its life-size figures and more relaxed drawing was a great achievement in the long history of bird illustration" (Jackson).