page_title: The Birds of America
section_title: Early publication history
hierarchical_section_title: The Birds of America / Early publication history
caption_attribution_description: English: Mourning Dove , Zenaida macroura, hand-colored engraving/aquatint
context_page_description: The Birds of America is a book by naturalist and painter John James Audubon, containing illustrations of a wide variety of birds of the United States. It was first published as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838, in Edinburgh and London. Not all of the specimens illustrated in the work were collected by Audubon himself; some were sent to him by John Kirk Townsend, who had collected them on Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth's 1834 expedition with Thomas Nuttall.
  The work consists of 435 hand-coloured, life-size prints, made from engraved plates, measuring around 39 by 26 inches. It includes images of five, possibly six, now-extinct birds: Carolina parakeet, passenger pigeon, Labrador duck, great auk, pinnated grouse, and, possibly, the Eskimo curlew. Art historians describe Audubon's work as being of high quality and printed with "artistic finesse." The plant life backgrounds of some 50 of the bird studies were painted by Audubon's assistant Joseph Mason, but he is not credited for his work in the book. He shot many specimen birds as well as transporting and maintaining supplies for Audubon. Audubon also authored the companion book Ornithological Biographies.
context_section_description: About 1820, around the age of 35, Audubon declared his intention to paint every bird in North America. In his bird art, he mainly forsook oil paint, the medium of serious artists of the day, in favour of watercolours and pastel crayons (and occasionally pencil, charcoal, chalk, gouache, and pen and ink). As early as 1807, he developed a method of using wires and threads to hold dead birds in lifelike poses while he drew them.
  In 1823, Audubon went to Philadelphia and New York, looking for financial support using subscriptions to enable him to publish his artwork. He sold the copper engraving plates through on a subscription basis in North America and Europe. Those subscribed obtained five plates at a time. Each subscriber received prints of three smaller birds, a larger bird and a mid-sized bird. The prints were produced from 1827 to 1838 that cost each subscriber around $1,000. It is thought that no more than 120 complete sets exist today. Each set consists of 435 individual plates that are based upon the original paintings. Each plate was engraved, printed, and hand colored by Robert Havell of London. While William Lizars, of Edinburgh, engraved the first ten plates, Havell actually finished some of those.
  Audubon often found support lacking. As a result, in 1826, he set sail for the United Kingdom with 250 of his original illustrations, looking for the financial support of subscribers and the technical abilities of engravers and printers. After exhibiting his drawings in Liverpool and Manchester, he journeyed to Edinburgh, where he met the accomplished engraver William H. Lizars. Lizars engraved up to ten of the first plates but was unable to continue the project when his colourists went on strike. In 1827, Audubon engaged the noted London animal engraver Robert Havell Jr., and his father, Robert Havell Sr. Havell Jr. oversaw the project through to its completion in 1838.
  The original edition of The Birds of America (sometimes called the Havell Edition after its printer, and sometimes called the "Double Elephant Folio", because of its size) was printed on handmade paper 39.5 inches tall by 28.5 inches wide. The principal printing technique was copperplate etching, but engraving and aquatint were also used. Colorists applied each color in assembly-line fashion (over fifty were hired for the work).
  Audubon funded the costly printing project through a pay-as-you-go subscription. From 1826 to 1829, he travelled around the UK and to Paris, lecturing on ornithology and frontier American life in an effort to entice wealthy patrons to subscribe to the series of prints. Subscribers included the French king Charles X, the British queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, Lord Spencer, and, later, the Americans Daniel Webster and Henry Clay.
  Prints were issued in sets of five every month or two in tin cases and each set usually included one very large bird, one medium-sized bird, and three small birds. The plates were published unbound and without any text to avoid having to furnish free copies to the British legal deposit libraries. It is estimated that not more than 200 complete sets were ever compiled. An accompanying text, issued separately, was written by Audubon and the Scottish naturalist and ornithologist William MacGillivray and published in five volumes in Edinburgh between 1831 and 1839, under the title Ornithological Biography, or, An account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America. The additional cost of the five volumes of text brought the total cost of plates and text to about $1000.
  After the folio edition was completed, Audubon decided to produce a more affordable edition and employed a lithographer from Philadelphia named J. T. Bowen. Bowen and his team created a smaller Royal Octavo edition, which was issued to subscribers in seven volumes and completed in 1844. Five more octavo editions were completed through 1877. The octavo edition used the text of the Ornithological biography but increased the number of plates to 500, separating some birds which had originally appeared together. Some new drawing
caption: Carolina pigeon,
  Zenaida macroura (now called mourning dove).
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