John Gould’s First Bird Book: A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains
Introducing John Gould, the Victorian ornithologist responsible for some of the most beautiful bird books ever published, and his first work, A century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains.
(Lophophorus impejanus, the Himalayan Monal)
Victorian ornithologist John Gould (1804-1881) was responsible for some of the most beautiful and monumental bird books of all time, and as specialists in this genre we regularly have copies of his best-known works, such as the Birds of Australia and Birds of Great Britain. It’s tempting to assume that Gould’s first attempt at a folio bird book would not have been as audacious as these, but A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains was both artistically revolutionary and scientifically significant, an important leap forward in ornithological illustration that made the later volumes possible.
Gould began his career as a taxidermist and by 1833 had become superintendent of the ornithological department at the newly established London Zoological Society, where he joined a circle of prominent naturalists. He was responsible for the scientific descriptions of birds collected by Charles Darwin during the voyage of HMS Beagle, and it was he who provided the crucial information that the wildly different Galapagos specimens were all finches.
(John Gould, Wellcome Images)
Gould ventured into publishing during the late 1820s, when the first substantial collection of Himalayan birds was obtained by the Zoological Society. Their novelty in Britain made them interesting both to naturalists and to wealthy enthusiasts, providing the opportunity to produce a lavish volume depicting all eighty species (one hundred birds in total were depicted, hence the title A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains).
(Himalayan Flameback)
Gould commissioned text by his friend and mentor N.A. Vigors, Secretary of the Zoological Society, and the beautiful illustrations were by his wife, Elizabeth, one of the most accomplished nature artists of the period.
(Elizabeth Gould, National Library of Australia)
She not only painted the original works but also transferred them to the lithographic stones for printing, a specialised skill in its own right. The images were then finished to the highest standard by teams of professional hand-colourists.
(The Great Hornbill)
The book was published in the imperial folio format, one of the largest sizes possible. Copies were often trimmed in the margins for binding, but our current copy is particularly wide-margined, with the leaves measuring 57 by 39 centimetres (approximately 22 by 15 inches).
The finished book appeared in twenty monthly parts between 1831 and 1832, with subscriptions from figures such as John James Audubon, Georges Cuvier, and Edward Lear (already one of Gould’s colleagues at the Zoological Society, Lear would contribute illustrations to future publications).
(The Indian Eagle-Owl)
A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains was by far the most accurate work on foreign ornithology published up to that time. Its success convinced Gould to continue as a publisher, and over the next fifty years he produced another forty-nine imperial folio volumes covering birds from almost every continent, including Australia, which he and Elizabeth visited to collect specimens and draw birds from life. Today Gould’s Himalayan Birds remains a highly desirable masterwork among ornithology books.
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