Here is the most comprehensive selection of Audubon's writings ever published, along with a spectacular portfolio of his drawings. The "Mississippi River Journal," the foremost record of an American artist's progress, details Audubon's first bird hunts through an old south still largely wilderness. Selections from his "1826 Journal" follow Audubon to Europe, where after years of relative obscurity and financial distress his abilities are finally recognized. Audubon's masterwork, the five-volume Ornithological Biography, is generously represented by 45 entries. Charming, haunting, and violent by turns, these vivid intimate portraits of the habits and habitats of the American birds changed American nature writing forever. The "Missouri River Journals" evoke the vanishing American Indian and the hardships of frontier life. An extensive selection of letters charting Audubon's artistic development, along with two essays on artistic technique and a brief memoir, round out the volume.

For the first time, all texts have been painstakingly prepared from original sources, without censorship or modernizing revision, constituting a major contribution to Audubon scholarship. Detailed general and ornithological indexes aid the reader in the field as well as in the study.

Sixty-four full-color plates and several manuscript sketches, some never before published, offer a unique perspective on Audubon's art. Including original watercolors, aquatint engravings and lithographs, they reveal the evolution of his compositions and the effects of his collaborations with his publishers in ways never before seen.

Here is the most comprehensive selection of Audubon's writings ever published, along with a spectacular portfolio of his drawings. The "Mississippi River Journal," the foremost record of an American artist's progress, details Audubon's first bird hunts through an old south still largely wilderness. Selections from his "1826 Journal" follow Audubon to Europe, where after years of relative obscurity and financial distress his abilities are finally recognized. Audubon's masterwork, the five-volume Ornithological Biography, is generously represented by 45 entries. Charming, haunting, and violent by turns, these vivid intimate portraits of the habits and habitats of the American birds changed American nature writing forever. The "Missouri River Journals" evoke the vanishing American Indian and the hardships of frontier life. An extensive selection of letters charting Audubon's artistic development, along with two essays on artistic technique and a brief memoir, round out the volume.

For the first time, all texts have been painstakingly prepared from original sources, without censorship or modernizing revision, constituting a major contribution to Audubon scholarship. Detailed general and ornithological indexes aid the reader in the field as well as in the study.

Sixty-four full-color plates and several manuscript sketches, some never before published, offer a unique perspective on Audubon's art. Including original watercolors, aquatint engravings and lithographs, they reveal the evolution of his compositions and the effects of his collaborations with his publishers in ways never before seen.