Beschreibung:

GOULD, John (1804-1881). The Birds of Great Britain . London: Taylor and Francis for the author, [1862-]1873.
GOULD, John (1804-1881). The Birds of Great Britain . London: Taylor and Francis for the author, [1862-]1873. 5 volumes, large 2° (555 x 379mm). 367 fine hand-coloured lithographic plates, most heightened with gum arabic, by Gould, Henry Constantine Richter, Joseph Wolf and William Hart printed by Walter or Walter & Cohn, 2 wood-engraved illustrations. (Plates of the Blue Rock Thrush [vol. II] and House Sparrow [III] with narrow white mark to one side, plate of the Ruddy Sheldrak [V] with small soil mark at margin, occasional light spots or specks to plates and text.) Contemporary dark green morocco gilt, top edge gilt (extremities rubbed, a few scuff marks). Provenance : Frederick Ducane Godman (1834-1919; ornithologist and lepidopterist) – Commander Clare Vyner of Studley Royal, Yorkshire (in his sale, Christie's, 9 March 1966, lot 115 to the father of the present vendor). THE GODMAN COPY WITH WIDE MARGINS AND PLATES IN A FRESH, BRIGHT STATE. Gould was especially proud of this work, and it 'was seen – perhaps partly because its subject was British, as the culmination of [his] ... genius' (Isabella Tree, The Ruling Passion of John Gould , 1991, p.207). The text is, of course, longer than in any of his other works, and the illustrations, many of them prepared from freshly killed specimens, include many more depictions of chicks, nests and eggs. Wolf, who drew 57 of the plates, had accompanied Gould on an ornithological tour of Scandinavia in 1856, and was responsible for persuading Gould and Richter to adopt a livelier treatment of the illustrations. Frederick Ducane Godman was a founding member of the British Onithologists' Union (BOU), joint author with Salvin of the 63-volume Biologia Centrali-Americana (1879-1915), author of a Monograph of the Petrels (1907-10), The Natural History of Azores (1870), and many papers in Ibis , chiefly on the birds of Central and South America. The BOU instituted the Godman-Salvin medal for contributions to ornithology and a memorial to the two is exhibited at the Natural History Museum. The one criticism of Godman made by Mullens & Swann is that 'He has never ... devoted any serious attention to British Birds' (p. 235). Fine Bird Books (1990) p.102; Mullens & Swann p. 242; Sauer 23; Wood p.365; Nissen IVB 372; Zimmer p.261.