Thomas Brown | Illustrations of Game Birds. London, 1834, folio, publisher's brown cloth gilt

Capt. Thomas Brown

Illustrations of the Game Birds of North America chiefly the size of nature. Edinburgh, Frazer & Co.; Dublin, William Curry Jnr. & Co.; Glasgow, John Smith & Son; London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1834

Folio (546 x 410mm.), engraved title by James Turvey, engraved dedication, 16 finely hand-coloured engraved plates by W.H. Lizars and others after Thomas Brown, A. Rider, J.B. Kidd, and others, publisher's brown cloth gilt with embossed decoration, morocco label on upper cover, preserved in a modern cloth box, minor restoration to title and outer margin of some plates, neatly rebacked to style 

THE SCARCEST BOOK ON AMERICAN GAME BIRDS. VERY RARE. According to Walter Faxon only three copies of this work could be found in 1919, and only one copy (with 15 of the 16 plates) is listed as having sold at auction in the last one hundred years (Sotheby's, 10 December 1909, lot 951).

Although this work essentially contains a selection of the plates from Brown's larger work Illustrations of American Ornithology, 1831-35, here they are coloured in a softer, less bold manner, which imparts a more naturalistic appearance. The Game Birds was issued before the completion of American Ornithology.

LITERATURE:

Fine Bird Books (1990), p. 82; W. Faxon, The Auk 36 (1919), p. 626; Nissen IVB 153; Zimmer, p. 102

PROVENANCE:

Samuel Garnder, bookplate; Henry Baker, Lincoln College Oxford, armorial bookplate