'The Most Perfect Coloured Figure of a Bird'
A comparison of the first two editions of the work that made New Zealand’s birds famous.
Usually, first editions are more expensive than later ones, but Walter Buller’s A History of the Birds of New Zealand — the first comprehensive, illustrated volume on the unique bird species of Aotearoa New Zealand — is one of the rare instances where this is not the case.
Buller, the son of a British missionary, was born on the North Island in 1838, and became a colonial magistrate, translator of Te Reo Maori, and self-taught naturalist. Buller realised that New Zealand’s biodiversity was being destroyed to make way for European-style farming, and so he began to record the birds and their habitats before what he assumed would be their ultimate extinction.
‘With a confidence unusual in colonial scientists he set out to describe and name new species of birds himself rather than submitting them to the metropolitan authorities. His Essay on the Ornithology of New Zealand, written for the Dunedin Exhibition in 1865, established him as a local authority on the subject, and, after he sent copies to influential scientists in Britain and Europe, also brought him to wider attention’ (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).
The first edition of A History of the Birds of New Zealand was published in parts during 1872 and 1873, in an edition of only 500 copies sold by private subscription. It was illustrated with 35 hand-coloured lithographs by J.G. Keulemans, one of the leading bird artists of the period.
‘Keulemans’ work in the first edition was characterized by delicate line and often exquisite colouring, the hand-colouring accentuating the more vivid portions of soft parts and plumage’ (Turbott, Buller’s Birds of New Zealand: A New Edition, 1967, p. xiii). The book was hailed as an artistic triumph and a major contribution to European knowledge of New Zealand’s avian fauna.
The positive reception led Buller to immediately prepare a much-expanded second edition, printed in the larger imperial quarto format. The lithographic stones used in the first edition had been erased, so Keulemans prepared forty-eight brand-new illustrations. These plates, printed as chromolithographs rather than hand-coloured, were seen through the press by the artist himself, and are even more finely produced than those of the first edition.
The Times described them as, ‘absolutely perfect’ and the prominent palaeontologist Richard Owen wrote that, ‘The specimen Part is illustrated by the most perfect coloured figure of a beautiful bird that I ever saw in any work’ (Turbott, p. xv). It’s this, along with the larger number of images and expanded text, that makes the second edition preferred by collectors.
One thousand copies of the second edition were printed, most issued in parts, but some as bound books in 1888. Our current example is particularly nice because it is one of those in the publisher’s deluxe binding featuring incredible gold takahē and kākāpō on the covers and spines.
Buller believed his books were the epitaph for New Zealand’s native species, but instead, the country became a world leader in conservation, and many of the birds he featured have been saved from extinction and become much-loved icons of Aotearoa. Keulemans’ illustrations are among the defining images of these birds, widely recognised and reproduced around the world. Both the first and second editions of A History of the Birds of New Zealand are historically and artistically important, and no ornithological library would be complete without them.
