New York: George R. Lockwood 1870/71.

8 volumes, large 8vo, finely bound in full contemporary “turkey” morocco with elaborate blind embossing to spines and boards. Gilt titles to spines are clean and bright. Gilt inner dentelles surrounding hand marbled endpapers. AEG. Ribbon markers in each volume. Extensively illustrated with hand colored full page plates throughout with the signature full color background for each by which the Lockwood edition differs from the earlier. Each plate is in fine condition. 500 hand-colored tinted –lithographed plates after J.J. and J. W. Audubon, drawn on stone by W.E. Hitchcock and R. Trembly, printed and colored by J.T. Bowen of Philadelphia, numerous wood-engraved illustrations. A beautiful copy of the octavo issue: a reprint published by George Lockwood of John Woodhouse Audubon’s edition of his father’s work in octavo form, printed in the main from the same lithographic stones and stereotype plates as the earlier edition. The stones were destroyed by a fire in Philadelphia warehouse in the 1870’s. The price (and size) of the first edition had proved prohibitive to many potential buyers, and the first octavo edition was issued in parts between 1839 and 1844 in an attempt by Audubon to enable “every student or lover of nature to place it in his library.” The elephant folio aquatint plates of the original were reduced using a camera lucida and variously modified. This edition includes 24 species not pictured in the first edition, and all the plates were systematically rearranged and renumbered to accord with the text. Cf. Anker 19; Ellis 105; cf. Nissen IVB 52; Tyler, Audubon’s Great National Work, 129, appendix n. 8-9; Zimmer pp.25-6 vg+/--.

ISBN: none.

[Item #NAT00001]