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John James Audubon: Writings & Drawings

64 full-color plates | Mississippi River Journal | Missouri River Journals | 45 entries from the Ornithological Biography | letters and other writings More

Edited by Christoph Irmscher

“Audubon’s word-work has been collected elsewhere and expensively, but this volume is the best value yet…. I am filled with a huge gratitude that The Library of America has chosen to include the writings of the man who proudly styled himself a ‘Citizen of the United States of North America.’” — The News and Observer

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

News Christoph Irmscher: Controversies remind us of how complex John James Audubon always was
September 24, 2022

Story of the Week John James Audubon, “The Eccentric Naturalist”
April 24, 2022

Interviews For pleasure or as a spiritual discipline, bird-watching is “a lesson in respect and humility”
March 24, 2020

The breathtaking art of John James Audubon’s Birds of America has been celebrated throughout the world since it first appeared over 150 years ago. Less well known is Audubon’s literary legacy: the magnificent volumes of natural history he published during his lifetime, as well as the remarkable journals, memoirs, and letters left behind at his death. In this unprecedented collection from The Library of America, Audubon the great nature writer takes his rightful place alongside Audubon the artist.

Here is the most comprehensive selection of Audubon’s writings ever published, along with a spectacular portfolio of his drawings. The “Mississippi River Journal,” the foremost record of an American artist’s progress, details Audubon’s first wilderness bird hunts; it is as fresh in its perceptions of the scenes and characters of the old South as of the forest and its creatures. Selections from his “1826 Journal” follow Audubon to Europe, where after years of relative obscurity and financial distress his abilities were finally recognized. Audubon’s masterwork, the five-volume Ornithological Biography, is represented here by 45 entries. Charming, haunting, and violent by turns, these vivid intimate portraits of the habits and habitats of American birds changed American nature writing forever.

In the “Missouri River Journals,” Audubon evokes the vanishing American Indian and the hardships of frontier life. An extensive selection of letters charting 20 years of Audubon’s artistic development, along with two essays on artistic technique and a brief memoir, round out the volume. Whenever possible, texts have been painstakingly prepared from original sources, without censorship or modernizing revision, constituting a major contribution to Audubon scholarship. Detailed general and ornithological indexes aid the reader in the field as well as in the study.

Sixty-four full-color plates and several manuscript sketches, some never before published, offer a unique perspective on Audubon’s art. Including original watercolors, aquatint engravings and lithographs, they reveal the evolution of his compositions and the effects of his collaborations with his publishers in ways never before seen.

Christoph Irmscher, volume editor, is Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, and author of Longfellow Redux, The Poetics of Natural History, and Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

John James Audubon: Writings & Drawings is kept in print by a gift from William S. Reese to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
Table of Contents

Mississippi River Journal

From 1826 Journal

From Ornithological Biography
The Wild Turkey (Plate 1: Wild Turkey)
Purple Grakle or Common Crow-Blackbird (Plate 2: Common Grackle)
The Bird of Washington (Plate 3: Bald Eagle)
The Great-footed Hawk (Plate 8: Peregrine Falcon)
The Mocking Bird (Plate 4: Northern Mockingbird)
The Carolina Parrot (Plates 5, 6, 7: Carolina Parakeet)
The White-headed Eagle (Plates 10, 11: Bald Eagle)
The Ruby-throated Humming Bird (Plate 9: Ruby-throated Hummingbird)
The Red-tailed Hawk (Plate 12: Red-tailed Hawk)
The Passenger Pigeon (Plates 14, 15: Passenger Pigeon)
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Plates 16, 17: Ivory-billed Woodpecker)
The Wood Thrush (Plates 18, 19: Wood Thrush)
The Fish Hawk, or Osprey (Plate 13: Osprey)
The Broad-winged Hawk (Plate 20: Broad-winged Hawk)
The Blue Jay (Plate 21: Blue Jay)
The Black Vulture or Carrion Crow (Plates 22, 24: Black Vulture)
The Pileated Woodpecker (Plate 25: Pileated Woodpecker)
The Mississippi Kite (Plate 23: Mississippi Kite)
The Pewee Flycatcher (Plates 26, 27: Eastern Phoebe)
The Snowy Owl (Plate 28: Snowy Owl)
The American Sparrow-Hawk (Plate 29: American Kestrel)
The American Crow (Plate 30: American Crow)
The Chimney Swallow, or American Swift (Plate 31: Chimney Swift)
The Golden Eagle (Plate 32: Golden Eagle)
The Canada Goose (Plate 33: Canada Goose)
The Clapper Rail, or Salt-water Marsh-Hen (Plate 34: Clapper Rail)
The Great Blue Heron (Plates 35, 47: Great Blue Heron)
The Puffin (Plate 36: Atlantic Puffin)
The Razor-billed Auk (Plate 37: Razorbill)
The Wood Ibis (Plate 38: Wood Stork)
Louisiana Heron (Plate 40: Tricolored Heron)
The Mallard (Plate 41: Mallard)
The White Ibis (Plate 42: White Ibis)
The Whooping Crane (Plate 39: Whooping Crane)
The Long-billed Curlew (Plate 43: Long-billed Curlew)
The Snowy Heron (Plate 44: Snowy Egret)
The Brown Pelican (Plates 45, 46: Brown Pelican)
The Great White Heron (Plate 47: Great Blue Heron)
Blue Heron (Plate 48: Little Blue Heron)
Blue-winged Teal (Plate 49: Blue-winged Teal)
Anhinga or Snake-Bird (Plates 50, 51: Anhinga)
American Avoset (Plate 56: American Avocet)
Great American Egret (Plate 52: Great Egret)
Trumpeter Swan (Plates 54, 55: Trumpeter Swan)
American Flamingo (Plate 53: Greater Flamingo)
Delineations of American Scenery and Manners
* The Ohio
* The Prairie
* The Original Painter
* Louisville in Kentucky
* The Eccentric Naturalist
* Pitting of Wolves
* Breaking Up of the Ice

Missouri River Journals

Other Writings
Account of the Method of Drawing Birds employed by J. J. Audubon, Esq. F. R. S. E., In a Letter to a Friend
My Style of Drawing Birds
Myself

Letters
To Lucy Audubon, December 9, 1826
To Lucy Audubon, May 15, 1827
To Lucy Audubon, August 6, 1827
To Lucy Audubon, November 2, 1828
To Lucy Audubon, May 10, 1829
To Lucy Audubon, October 23, 1831
To Robert Havell, April 20, 1833
To Victor G. Audubon, September 15, 1833
To John Bachman, August 25, 1834
To John Bachman, December 3, 1834
To John Bachman, April 20, 1835
To John Bachman, January 22, 1836
To John Bachman, February 24, 1837
To John Bachman, October 4, 1837
To John Bachman, April 14, 1838
To Robert Havell, March 13, 1839
To John Bachman, January 2, 1840
To John Bachman, November 12, 1843

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ISBN: 978-1-88301168-0 928 pages

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N° 113 Library of America Series

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