or, synopsis of the birds of Australia containing nearly one-third of the whole, or about 220 examples, for the most part from the original drawings of Sylvester Diggles.
Brisbane, printed by Thorne & Greenwell, 1877
The most ambitious handcoloured book published in Australia. A rare extra-illustrated copy of the second edition of Diggles' monumental work, modestly styled a Companion to Gould's Handbook. Illustrated with 126 hand-coloured lithographs covering 220 varieties of bird native to Australia, the additional 3 plates depicting the black-shouldered kite, funeral cockatoo, and southern stove plover.
'The plates and text were originally published in parts between 1866 and 1870 under the title The Ornithology of Australia. Financial crisis and a subsequent drop in subscriber numbers meant Diggles was not able to complete the ornithology to his satisfaction, and by 1877 felt that the series was "as complete as it probably ever will be". As a result, the work was reissued in its definitive form with new title, index, and preliminaries, but omitted three plates noted in the indices as "description only". This dropped the total complement of plates from 126 in the first edition to 123 in the second, likely because Diggles had access to a 'limited store of plates from which to make up sets and three plates were in such short supply that he had to omit them entirely' (Wantrup).
'Diggles's remarkable work is essential to a collection of colourplate natural history... Given its importance as the largest and most ambitious handcolored book ever published in Australia, it also has a central place, in one form or another, in any less specialised Australian collection' (Wantrup).
Second edition; 2 vols bound in 1; folio (38 x 27.5 cm); 126 hand-coloured lithographed plates, tissue-guards, bookplate to front pastedown, intermittent mild spotting, occasional offsetting, hinges reinforced; later brown morocco, panels framed in gilt, gilt spine in 6 compartments, all edges gilt, a handsome copy.
Zimmer p.171; Ripley/Scribner p.78; Wantrup 308.
'The plates and text were originally published in parts between 1866 and 1870 under the title The Ornithology of Australia. Financial crisis and a subsequent drop in subscriber numbers meant Diggles was not able to complete the ornithology to his satisfaction, and by 1877 felt that the series was "as complete as it probably ever will be". As a result, the work was reissued in its definitive form with new title, index, and preliminaries, but omitted three plates noted in the indices as "description only". This dropped the total complement of plates from 126 in the first edition to 123 in the second, likely because Diggles had access to a 'limited store of plates from which to make up sets and three plates were in such short supply that he had to omit them entirely' (Wantrup).
'Diggles's remarkable work is essential to a collection of colourplate natural history... Given its importance as the largest and most ambitious handcolored book ever published in Australia, it also has a central place, in one form or another, in any less specialised Australian collection' (Wantrup).
Second edition; 2 vols bound in 1; folio (38 x 27.5 cm); 126 hand-coloured lithographed plates, tissue-guards, bookplate to front pastedown, intermittent mild spotting, occasional offsetting, hinges reinforced; later brown morocco, panels framed in gilt, gilt spine in 6 compartments, all edges gilt, a handsome copy.
Zimmer p.171; Ripley/Scribner p.78; Wantrup 308.
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