WCAS Book of the Month Sept 2020: "America's Other Audubon"
Channel: Western Cuyahoga Audubon
Date: 2020-09-28

WCAS Book of the Month "America's Other Audubon"

​Event#1: Book Author Interview with Q&A
Author: Joy Kiser, Author, America's Other Audubon
Host: Gloria Ferris, WCAS Board Member
Recorded: Sunday, September 20, 2020, 7:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. (EDT)

Description: Amateur artist Genevieve Jones, the daughter of a country doctor from Circleville, Ohio, was given permission to undertake an expensive book production project after a broken engagement. Sold through subscription with illustrations colored by hand and issued in parts, as Audubon’s, Birds of America had been, Genevieve’s book, The Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs was initiated in 1879 and completed in 1886.

But only one month after the first part, which was composed of the lithographs of the nests and eggs of the Baltimore oriole, the wood thrush, and the black-billed cuckoo, was issued and received rave reviews from the ornithological community, Genevieve died of typhoid fever.

Her grieving family then invested 7 years of their own lives into completing her work. Her brother, Howard, collected the specimens and wrote the field notes; her mother, Virginia, took over drawing the illustrations and superintending the colorists; and her father, Nelson, lost all his retirement savings ($25,000) in this venture into self-publishing, but Genevieve’s book was awarded a bronze medal in the World's Columbian Exposition (all of the medals were bronze) and is considered one of the rarest ornithological works today.

America’s Other Audubon provided a brief history of the Jones family’s project and reproduced all the original art work for the first time. Today, a book may be created or purchased by the click of a computer mouse. The degree of effort the production of a book required over 100 years ago has been largely forgotten.

Author Joy Kiser, has been tracking down primary sources related to the Jones family’s venture into self-publishing for over 20 years and will share details of her research that lead to the publication of America’s Other Audubon.

Jonathan Rosen, author of The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature wrote, "If Audubon -- who had plenty of help, but who lives in the mind as a solitary inventor -- is the Robinson Crusoe of nature art, then the Joneses are the Swiss Family Robinson. America's Other Audubon is a vital work of scholarly reclamation that will, I hope, introduce a wide world to the remarkable Genevieve Jones and the familial collaboration her life and death inspired."

Western Cuyahoga Audubon is a chapter of the National Audubon Society based in Cuyahoga County in Northern Ohio, USA. WCAS seeks to connect and educate the public and conserve natural habitats for the sustainability of all bird species.