Audubon's Birds of America (The Audubon Society Baby Elephant Folio)

New York: Harrison House, 1985. Third printing. Hardcover. g+. Folio. Unpaginated. Original pictorial dust-jacket over tan cloth, with black lettering on spine. Color frontispiece. This splendid edition of Audubon's Birds of America displays all 435 of Audubon's brilliant handcolored engravings in exquisite reproductions taken from the original plates of the Audubon Society's archival copy of the rare Double Elephant Folio. Although many attempts have been made to re-create the magnificent illustrations in Audubon's masterpiece, nothing equals the level of fidelity or scale achieved in this high-quality edition. Organized and annotated by Roger Tory Peterson, America's best-known ornithologist, and issued with the full endorsement and cooperation of the Audubon Society, this magnificent volume is as thorough in scientific classification as it is beautiful. Peterson's fascinating introduction places Audubon in the context of the history of American ornithological art and also reproduces a wide sampling of the work of Audubon's notable predecessors and disciples, including Peterson's own justly famous paintings. This new systematic arrangement of the prints, complete with informative commentaries about each bird, made it possible to correct many of the problems or errors in Audubon's original edition revealed by later scholarship. The colorful captions in the back provide fascinating commentaries on each featured bird. This volume is splendidly illustrated with 917 illustrations, including 482 in full-color. Moderate creasing and minor closed tear along upper edges of dust-jacket. DJ in overall fair to good, binding and interior in good+ to very good condition.