The Birds of Asia [Volume III]

London: Taylor and Francis, for the Author, 1883. Folio. (21 3/8 x 14 1/2 inches). Volume III only with all 78 plates. 20th-century half red morocco and cloth, all edges gilt

Provenance: The Avicultural Society, T.H. Newman Bequest (bookplate dated 1944)

Volume III of the most comprehensive work on Asiatic ornithology of its time

The present volume came from a work that is arguably Gould's masterpiece. It was the last of his great folio monographs, with the final three parts being completed by Richard Bowdler Sharpe after Gould's death in 1881 with the descriptions by Sharpe are identified by his initials, those without his initials were presumably prepared by Sharpe from Gould's notes. The work as a whole was issued between January 1850 and October 1883 in 35 original parts to 207 subscribers. The geographical range of the birds described is enormous and speaks volumes about the seemingly boundless self-belief of the 19th-century's most successful ornithologist. In his excellent introduction, Sharpe notes that the work describes "Species from Palestine to the westward, and from the Moluccas to the East". Given this wide geographical spread and the varying environments that it encompasses (from the Himalayas to the Arabian desert to the jungles of the tropics). This volume covers a variety of passerine birds, including thrushes, bluebirds, blackbirds, dial birds, trochalopteron, and others.

Fine Bird Books (1990), p.78; Anker 178; Nissen IVB 368; Sauer 17; Wood p 365; Zimmer p. 258.