Birds of the Bible: Chats with the Children about Bible Birds

Description:

Undated (Britlish Library gives date of publication 1884; Bodlean Library copy, accession stamp dated 12th Feb 1885). Each page with border printed in red. Attractive chromolithographic frontispiece of a sparrow (initialled E.T. - Eliza Turck), wood engravings to text including attractive engraved head and tail pieces and decorative initial drop capitals to each chapter.

Note on Illustrations: This copy with frontispiece of the Sparrow ('taken by permission' from Cassell's Familiar British Birds). We note a variant in the Bodleian legal deposit copy in which the frontispiece (also from the same publication) is the plate featuring the Swallow.

Written as a series of engaging lessons for a juvenile audience by the Irish poet and antiquary, James Bowker. Interesting that the books includes a printed greeting to Christina G. Rossetti, a central figure in Victorian religious poetry and closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She had a well-known interest in scriptural symbolism and the natural world. Bowker’s book, treats birds not only as zoological subjects but as carriers of biblical meaning, precisely the kind of symbolic reading that informed Rossetti’s verse.

Condition

Small 8vo, orig. dec. blue cloth, elaborately stamped in gilt, black and brown, bevelled boards, all edges gilt. Extremities lightly rubbed. Reward bookplate (U.M.F.C. Sunday School, Nanpean [Cornwall], 1907) to endpaper. A bright, attractive and exceptionally well-preserved copy. Fine.