Meyer, Henry Leonard
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 19 June 2018 at 12:00 BST
Description
Illustrations of British Birds. London: Longman & Co., [1835-41], First edition, 1st or 3rd issue, 4 volumes, 4to (380 x 270mm.), lithographed throughout, titles, 313 fine hand-coloured lithographed plates (as called for in the "Contents" leaf of each volume), original green ribbed cloth, uncut, spines lettered in gilt, bookplates, occasionally a little light spotting
Footnote
Provenance: The Library of a Country House.
Note: “One of our most valuable illustrated works on ornithology” (Mullens and Swann). This set has a list of Contents in each volume calling respectively for 78, 73, 80, & 82 plates, (total: 313). The present set has the first issues of the title-pages (no full stop after Longman & Co).
The work has acomplicated bibliographic history. A note by Meyer's in another copy (sold at Christie's 10 March 2000, lot 11) states definitively that the work was complete in 78 parts (rather than 79 as stated by Wood), but the irregular fashion in which the various editions were issued and the exact dates of publication are obscure (the title pages are undated). The first issue is said to have 313 plates, while the second issue had 320 plates. Mullens and Swann describe the practice of completing sets after Meyer's death: "The whole subject is attended with utmost difficulty, hardly any two copies of the folio (imp. 4to) editions of the Illustrations being alike. This is owing to the fact that many extra plates were coloured and added to copies executed for friends of the Meyer family. The difficulty is added to from the fact that there were certainly two, possibly three issues of the first edition of the folio, and that the later ones were being published before the first was complete, the plates often being interchanged or duplicated." The present is typical of the complicated publication history of a work which Wood states "with the possible exception of Lord Lilford's Birds... is the finest and most complete atlas of portraits of British avifauna (with their eggs) ever published."
Nissen IVB 627; Fine Bird Books, p.93.; Mullens and Swann, p.398.