This fact can only further enhance the commercial standing of what has long been regarded as one of the finer 19th century bird books and at Sotheby’s on June 6, a two-vol. first in contemporary red morocco was sold at £68,000 (Milestone Books) but, as usual, there was some spotting to the plates.
Other Elliots seen at Sotheby’s included his continuation of the Audubon and Wilson books in The New and Heretofore Unfigured Species of the Birds of North America, in the original boards of 1866-69 and containing a total of 72 plates of life-size birds, which sold at £22,000 (Reese).
Sold at the same sum to Antiquariaat Junk wasan 1873 ...Birds of Paradise, illustrated with 36 superb coloured lithos by Smit after Wolf. Bound in contemporary half morocco, the latter bore on the flyleaf the Boston library stamp of the American ornithologist Charles B. Crory, a copy of whose 1885 Birds of Haiti and San Domingo was sold at £800. The plates in the latter are in the style of Keulemans but may well have been executed by Crory himself, and a lot comprising just five coloured litho plates (of 20) from a scarce Crory work of 1880-81 called Beautiful and Curious Birds of the World – in this instance the Dodo, Rifle Bird of Paradise, Kiwi, Great Auk and King Bird of Paradise – realised £2400.
Daniel Giraud Elliot’s Monograph of the Phasanidae or Family of Pheasants
Recent documentary evidence suggests that the lithographic stones for the 79 plates by Smit and Keulemans after Joseph Wolf that illustrate Daniel Giraud Elliot’s Monograph of the Phasanidae or Family of Pheasants were destroyed after only 150 copies had been taken.
