Audubon: America’s Greatest Naturalist and His Voyage of Discovery to Labrador
by Peter B. Logan
From Ashbryn Press:
The Birds of America. One man’s dream to illustrate and publish a work depicting all the birds of North America. Midway through the nearly twelve-year project, the French-American painter and naturalist John James Audubon was beset by obstacles and began to doubt if he could complete it. This overlooked chapter in his life comes alive in this volume, as Audubon faces a difficult test while the fate of his Great Work hangs in the balance.
By the spring of 1833, after six years of serial publication, not even half of the four hundred promised prints had been issued to his subscribers. Audubon still needed to find and paint scores of additional species before he could lay aside his brush.
The uncharted shores of Labrador beckoned with rumors of rare birds, but an expedition to the north would be a severe trial. It was a desolate land, and its brief summer would afford him little time to accomplish his mission. At the age of forty-eight, he questioned how much longer he could maintain the punishing pace his project demanded. His wife, Lucy, feared for his health. Audubon was undaunted.
As he sailed from Eastport, Maine, in early June, developments abroad threatened to undo his work. Robert Havell Jr., the brilliant London engraver and printer who had brought Audubon’s vision to life, was ready to quit. At the same time, the naturalist’s harshest critic in England had just unleashed an attack on him in Britain s foremost natural-history journal. Half a world away, Audubon was unable to respond.
Through the lens of this heretofore unwritten tale, Audubon scholar Peter B. Logan offers a beautifully textured narrative for historians and Audubon lovers alike. Meticulously researched, using many previously unknown sources, this groundbreaking book portrays the panoramic sweep of Audubon s remarkable life, from his illegitimate birth through his aimless early years as a frontier storekeeper to his decision to launch a daring enterprise from which he would emerge as America s greatest naturalist. At the heart of this saga lies the Labrador expedition. With the reader alongside during the most critical point in his career, Audubon is revealed as his closest friends knew him dynamic, gregarious, and utterly indomitable, while simultaneously insecure, egotistical, and not beyond stretching the truth.
Addressing historical errors made by previous biographers and supplemented with numerous maps and illustrations, as well as an appendix of never-before-published documents, Audubon: America’s Greatest Naturalist and His Voyage of Discovery to Labrador rewrites the unforgettable story of the iconic American Woodsman, whose passion and purpose produced an enduring monument to natural history that has never been equaled.
This thick book (although around half of it is appendices, notes, and index) tells of a man we’re all familiar with, but hopefully does so in a way that is new and meaningful. I look forward to finding out if that’s the case, as Audubon is someone I can’t read enough about.
Audubon: America’s Greatest Naturalist and His Voyage of Discovery to Labrador
by Peter B. Logan
Hardcover; 816 pages
Ashbryn Press; April 26, 2016
ISBN: 9780997228212
$40.00
Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)
Posted by Grant McCreary on May 10th, 2016.
Comment