Beschreibung:

AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES The Birds of America; from Original Drawings by John James Audubon ..Re-issued by J[ohn] W[oodhouse] Audubon. New York: Roe Lockwood & Son...Chromolithography by J[ulius] Bien 1860. Double elephant folio, 1010 x 676mm. (39 3/8 x 26 5/8 in.), contemporary half red morocco, spines in eight gilt and gilt-lettered compartments, g.e., marbled endpapers, restorations to head and tail of spine and corners, joints and board edges rubbed with some fraying, some scraping to covers, repairs to endpapers and flyleaves; atlas volume only, title-leaf, first 3 plates and final plate with inner margins and most outer margins renewed, 2 or 3 tears slightly affecting image, each of these plates with a vertical double or triple crease (all except the first plate reinforced on versos), causing slight fraying to the image of the second plate (289, Virginia Partridge) and to the Scaup Duck image of the last plate (397/398), plate 289 with 2 other minor soft creases, plates 19 and 257 each with a tear just entering the image, most of the other plates with some marginal repair and occasional short marginal tears, some slight discoloration to outer margins, somewhat greater discoloration to 4 or 5 plates, very occasional offsetting or faint showthrough, the latter more noticeably affecting plate 21 (Pigeon Hawk) . SECOND FOLIO EDITION, lithographed title-page and 150 chromolithographed plates on 105 sheets (all published), some finished by hand, by Julius Bien after John James Audubon Nissen IVB 50; Fries, Appendix B, pp. 355-59; Ellis 102 (a fragment); Zimmer pp. 24-5. A good copy, complete with the often lacking Part 15. In 1858 or 1859 John Woodhouse Audubon set out to to reproduce his father's Birds of America at half the original price by producing full-size chromolithographic reproductions of the original hand-colored aquatint plates, and by printing the smaller plates two to a sheet. To carry out the project he enlisted the well-known cartographer and printmaker Julius Bien who transferred the etchings onto stone, printing the colors and using additional hand-coloring only when strictly necessary. The work was to be issued in 45 parts, of which one would contain the text, for a total subscription price of $500. Only the first 15 parts and the seven 8vo text volumes were published, however, before printing was interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War, and, it was rumored, by the shady dealings of certain financial backers. The failure of this venture, followed shortly by the deaths of both of her sons, obliged Audubon's widow to raise funds by putting up for sale her husband's original drawings and copper-plates. The New York Historical Society bought the drawings in 1863 for $4000; the copper plates failed to sell and most were melted down. Although a full reprint of Audubon's Birds of America had to wait for the Johnson Reprint Corporation's facsimile edition of 1971-73, the 150 plates reproduced by Bien and J. W. Audubon - Bien include some of J. J. Audubon's most celebrated images, such as the wild turkey, the flamingo, the barn owl and the white-headed eagle. No prospectus having been found, it is not known how many copies were published; Fries succeeded in locating 49.