In this late age of print, headlines tell us nearly daily how little value there is left in physical books. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, for instance, famously remarked that he’s made grumpy by books and the way that they’re always “flopping” themselves shut. Get rid of ‘em! Useless, heavy, ugly relics, we’re told.
Not so fast. Yesterday Sotheby’s sold an original edition of John James Audubon’s Birds of America at auction for $11.5 million, setting a record for the sale of printed books at auction. Maybe the modern war on print has triggered feelings of nostalgia toward physical books, or maybe this is another sign that the war is just silly marketing-speak from those who sell devices. Or maybe it just means that a wealthy British “art dealer and bird enthusiast” has spent a pretty sum on a beautiful and rare edition of one of the world’s most famous books. And congratulations to him.
If you’ve got Audubon fever but couldn’t possibly wait for the next chance to spend millions when Christies auctions off another original set in 2012, let me humbly suggest an alternative. In 2008 we published a slip-cased edition collecting Audubon’s early drawings, those on which he honed the skills he’d later use to produce Birds of America. The book includes full-color reproductions in large format of a collection of early works (in pastel, watercolor, and other media) of American and European birds. It also includes biographical, scientific, and bibliographic essays, ornithological commentary, and an index of the species depicted. And at just one 92,000th of the cost of Michael Tollemache’s score at auction, it’s a holiday steal.
On its release, our Audubon: Early Drawings was lauded for the insight it offered into Audubon’s development. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Jonathan Rosen praised the book’s “lavish reproductions and scientific notes” for how they document “the naturalist turning into the artist, laboring not merely to give his birds scientific accuracy but an almost uncanny life force.”
The images of the Passenger Pigeon up top and the Osprey below it each come from our edition. You can view a slideshow of a dozen others and read more about the book here. Happy birding!
