Coloured Figures of the Eggs of British Birds

Description:

First edition. Edited after the author's death by R. Bowdler Sharpe. Fine chromolithographic plates (numbered 1-59, 58a).

The fine lithographic plates are among the most notable features of the work, both for their quality and for their significance in the history of British ornithological illustration. The preface takes particular pride in the fact that the production of the volume was undertaken entirely in Sheffield, in contrast to the increasingly common practice of having ornithological illustrations produced abroad. “It is satisfactory to know that, whilst many recent Ornithological illustrations have avowedly been ‘made in German’, in this instance all the work in connection with the drawing of the eggs, the lithographing of the plates, the printing of the letterpress, and the binding of the volume has been done in Sheffield, at the works of Messrs. Pawson & Brailsford…”

The contemporary reception of the illustrations was equally favourable. A review in The Zoologist, 4th series, vol. 1 (1897), no. 667, particularly praised the scope and novelty of the work, noting that it included a full enumeration of species, among them the extinct Great Auk (Alca impennis). Of particular importance were two eggs belonging to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, which, according to the reviewer, were “now figured for the first time”.

The review concluded with an unequivocal assessment of the book’s importance:

‘To conclude a necessarily brief notice, we may surely say that we now possess the book on British Birds’ Eggs.’

Condition

Roy. 8vo, orig. cloth, lightly rubbed to extremities; some foxing to frontispiece, a few small spots to page edges and light foxing to margins of a few plates, but a much cleaner copy than often found with this work. Very good.