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An introduction to the birds of Australia

John Gould (1804-1881)
London: Printed for the author, by Richard and John E. Taylor, 1848

Rare Books & Special Collections
Rare Books Collection RB 598.2 G69i

We thank our donor...

Conservation treatment of An introduction to the birds of Australia was funded through the generosity of an anonymous donor in May 2017.

Synopsis

Consisting of just 134 pages, John Gould’s 1848 An introduction to the birds of Australia is a separate publication, in octavo form, which provides both the preface and introduction to his massive seven-volume set of The birds of Australia (1840-1848).

John Gould was born in Dorset, England, in 1804.  He became interested in plants and birds at a early age when he worked with his father as a gardener.  At the age of 23, the Zoological Society of London appointed Gould as its taxidermist, a position which would see him mix with some of England’s leading naturalists.  He was often the first to see new collections of birds, and in 1831-32 he brought one such collection to life in a magnificent volume of 80 colour plates titled A century of birds from the Himalaya Mountains.  Other works soon followed, including a five-volume set of The birds of Europe (1832-37).

Gould’s attention then turned to the birds of Australia, and in 1838 he and his wife, together with their eldest son and nephew and zoological collector, John Gilbert, boarded the Parsee for Hobart.  They began fieldwork in Van Diemen’s Land and its surrounding islands, with Gilbert later heading to Western Australia and Gould to New South Wales and the Murray scrubs of South Australia, accompanied by Charles Sturt.  He also visited Kangaroo Island but Adelaide, with its ‘chaotic jumble of sheds and mud huts’ was of no real interest to him.[1]

The Gould’s left Sydney in April 1840 and by December that year the publication of The birds of Australia began in London.  Culminating in seven volumes and some 600 colour plates, The birds… included 328 new species, named by Gould.[2]  A number of the drawings had been executed by his wife but upon her death in 1841, after the birth of her eighth child, other artists were employed.  In 1869 a supplementary volume, issued in parts, was completed, bringing the total number of colour plates to 681.

Although devastated by his wife’s death, and left to care for their young children, Gould continued to work, keeping in touch with Sturt and other naturalists, and subsidising other collectors.  He produced numerous papers for scientific journals and issued other important works – A monograph of the Trochilidae, or family of Humming-Birds (1849-61), The birds of Asia (1850-83), The birds of Great Britain (1862-73) and The birds of New Guinea and the adjacent Papuan Islands (finalised by R.B. Sharpe in 1888).  His interest in Australian wildlife continued with The mammals of Australia, a three-volume set produced between 1845-63, and Handbook to the birds of Australia, a two-volume set published in 1865.

The Library’s copy of An Introduction to the birds of Australia (1848) is an octavo which has been inscribed “T.C. Eyton Esq., with the respects of the author.”  It is the preface and introduction to Gould’s seven-volume set of The birds of Australia.  In its “Notice” which appears after the dedication, Gould writes: “The Preface and Introduction to my “Birds of Australia” having been set up in small type for facility of correction, I have had a limited number of copies printed in an octavo form, for distribution among my scientific friends and others, to whom I trust it will be at once useful and acceptable. They must however still regard it more as a proof-sheet than otherwise, inasmuch as it contains many imperfections, most of which have been corrected in the folio edition…”.  The book lists the scientific names of the birds which appear in the seven-volume set, together with descriptions of their appearance and characteristics, and also includes tables of the range and distribution of the species.  The names of the subscribers to The birds of Australia, who each paid £115 for the set, can also be found just prior to the introduction.

Original Condition

Octavo cloth binding with both front and rear boards detached. Significant loss of cloth to spine, board edges and board corners.  Textblock split in multiple sections and selotape damage to front and rear endpapers. Requires rebacking and re-sewing.

Restoration by Anthony Zammit

Existing cloth cover lifted at the board edges and corners in order to insert new plum-coloured, durable cloth. Masking tape removed from the original spine and new cloth applied to the spine. Paper spine label re-attached. Textblock re-sewn and front and rear hinges strengthened with Japanese repair paper. Selotape damage to endpapers repaired.

Footnotes:

[1] Chisholm, A.H., "Gould, John (1804-1881)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 1, 1966, accessed online 15 May 2017
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gould-john-2113

[2] "John Gould", Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia, accessed online 15 May 2017
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gould