Audubon's Elephant: The story of John James Audubon's epic struggle to publish The Birds of America Book

A first edition copy of John James Audubon's THE BIRDS OF AMERICA now sells for several million pounds. This narrative account is the first to concentrate on the crucial periods that Audubon, an American, but born illegitimate in Haiti, spent in England in the 1820s and 1830s and will tell how the world's most famous work of ornithological art came into being. It will describe the astonishing energy and persistence with which Audubon fought his 12-year battle in Liverpool, Edinbugh and London in a period of great political instability - and how his opponents tried to spike his guns. It will also explain the technical processes involved in the production of such large coloured engravings.Duff Hart-Davis will draw on the archives of the families with whom Audubon stayed and worked and will fill out his own sketches of contemporaries whom he met and admired - Sir Walter Scott, the naturalist and engraver Thomas Bewick, and the leading English bird artist of the day, John Gould. PS: The Elephant in the title describes the dimensions of the original BIRDS OF AMERICARead More