British birds

London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1918. Mixed edition. Titles in red and black, 82 colored plates after Thorburn. Contemporary red cloth, gilt lettering, top edge gilt; despite some fading on the binding, plates are very clean. A nice and crisp copy from the Library of James Dolan Jr., curator of the San Diego Zoological Society. First edition of Volume IV, second edition of Volume III, and third edition of Volumes I and II. This work is known to contain the finest twentieth-century illustrations of birds. Thorburn’s life-long study has conferred to him an extraordinary capacity for catching the distinctive attitudes of the birds he portrays. Over four hundred species are drawn from life and in harmonious surroundings. The preface to the first volume states that the new edition, the third one, has two additional plates showing the warblers of the British islands, rare species in winter plumage and other new species. In addition to the outstanding illustrations, each bird is separately described, (though Thorburn candidly confesses that these descriptions are compiled from ordinary text-books). He groups the birds of one family on the same plate so that it is possible to compare the resemblances and differences between similar birds. The first two volumes are devoted to the Passeres, Volume II also including the Picarie and Accipitres, the cormorants and herons. The third and fourth volumes cover the water birds (Anseres, Columbae, Gallinae, etc etc), the Gallinaceous birds and pigeons.

Thorburn (1860-1935) was an eminent English artist of birds and animals who published several zoological works. His well-executed and colorful pictures show birds in their natural surroundings. At the age of 20, Thorburn’s work was accepted for the Royal Academy Exhibition in London, and in 1887 his reputation was secured by a commission to illustrate Lord Lilford’s Coloured figures of the birds of the British Isles, for which he painted 268 watercolors.

Anker, 508; Wood, p. 597; Zimmer, p. 634.