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Under a Wild Sky
John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of America
by William Souder
ISBN: 0865476713
ISBN-13: 9780865476714
Format: Hardcover
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Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Published date: 2004
Edition: 1th edition
Size: 6.5 x 9.5 inches
Weight: 1.45 pounds
Pages: 367
Publisher's Notes
Furnishes a fascinating glimpse of John James Audubon, a self-taught painter, his extraordinary efforts to record the wild birds of North America, and his fifteen-year struggle against a conventional and suspicious scientific establishment to find a publisher for his masterwork, The Birds of America.
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From the Pulitzer Prize—winning historian Richard Rhodes, the first major biography of John James Audubon in forty years, and the first to illuminate fully the private and family life of the master illustrator of the natural world. Rhodes shows us young Audubon arriving in New York from France in 1803, his illegitimacy a painful secret, speaking no English but already drawing and observing birds. We see him falling in love, marrying the wellborn English girl next door, crossing the Appalachians to frontier Kentucky to start a new life, fashioning himself into an American just as his adopted country was finding its identity. Here is Audubon exploring the wilderness of birds–pelicans wading the shallows of interior rivers, songbirds flocking, passenger pigeons darkening the skies–and teaching himself to revivify them in glorious life-size images. Now he finds his calling: to take his hundreds of watercolor drawings to England to be engraved in a great multivolume work called The Birds of America. Within weeks of his arrival there in 1826, he achieves remarkable celebrity as “the American Woodsman.” He publishes his major work as well as five volumes of bird biographies enhanced by his authentic descriptions of pioneer American life. Audubon’s story is an artist’s story but also a moving love story. In his day, communications by letter across the ocean were so slow and uncertain that John James and his wife, Lucy, almost lost each other in the three years when the Atlantic separated them – until he crossed the Atlantic and half the American continent to claim her. Their letters during this time are intimate, moving, and painful, and they attest to an enduring love. We examine Audubon’s legacy of inspired observation–the sonorities of a wilderness now lost, the brash life of a new nation just inventing itself–precisely, truthfully, lyrically captured. And we see Audubon in the fullness of his years, made rich by his magnificent work, winning public honor: embraced by writers and scientists, fêted by presidents and royalty. Here is a revelation of Audubon as the major American artist he is. And here he emerges for the first time in his full humanity–handsome, charming, volatile, ambitious, loving, canny, immensely energetic. Richard Rhodes has given us an indispensable portrait of a true American icon.
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A definitive anthology of nature writings by the great artist and ornithologist features Audubon's lively and colorful writings about the American wilderness and its plant and animal life, accompanied by excerpts from his journals, letters, and published works that include his keen profiles of wild birds, accounts of his river journeys with the Osage, and more.
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Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America
Souder, William
New York: North Point Press, 2004. Quarter bound in brown cloth. Black marker remainder dot to upper page edges, else a fine copy. 367 pp. Illustrations. Notes, bibliography, index. Dust jacket in fresh protective mylar. "Before Audubon, ornithological illustrations depicted scaled-down birds perched in static poses. Wheeling beneath storm-wracked skies or ripping flesh from freshly killed prey, Audubon's life-size birds looked as if they might fly screeching off the page. The wildness in the images matched the untamed spirit in Audubon -- a self-taught painter and self-anointed aristocrat who, with his buckskins and long hair, wanted to be seen as both a hardened frontiersman and a cultured man of science. In truth, neither his friends nor his detractors ever knew exactly who Audubon was or where he came from. Tormented by a fog of ambiguities surrounding his birth, he reinvented himself ceaselessly, creating a life as dramatic as his fictionalizations of it. But when he came east at thirty-eight -- broke and desperate to find a publisher for his Birds -- he ran squarely into a scientific establishment still wedded to convention and suspicious of the brash newcomer and his grandiose claims. It took Audubon fifteen years to prevail in both his project and his vision. How he triumphed and what drove him is the subject of this gripping narrative.". First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Fine. 8vo. ( more information)
Offered by Turn-The-Page Books (United States)
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Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America
Souder, William
New York: North Point Press, 2004. Quarter bound in brown cloth. Black marker remainder dot to lower page edges, else a fine copy. 367 pp. Illustrations. Notes, bibliography, index. Dust jacket in fresh protective mylar. "Before Audubon, ornithological illustrations depicted scaled-down birds perched in static poses. Wheeling beneath storm-wracked skies or ripping flesh from freshly killed prey, Audubon's life-size birds looked as if they might fly screeching off the page. The wildness in the images matched the untamed spirit in Audubon -- a self-taught painter and self-anointed aristocrat who, with his buckskins and long hair, wanted to be seen as both a hardened frontiersman and a cultured man of science. In truth, neither his friends nor his detractors ever knew exactly who Audubon was or where he came from. Tormented by a fog of ambiguities surrounding his birth, he reinvented himself ceaselessly, creating a life as dramatic as his fictionalizations of it. But when he came east at thirty-eight -- broke and desperate to find a publisher for his Birds -- he ran squarely into a scientific establishment still wedded to convention and suspicious of the brash newcomer and his grandiose claims. It took Audubon fifteen years to prevail in both his project and his vision. How he triumphed and what drove him is the subject of this gripping narrative.". First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Fine. 8vo. ( more information)
Offered by Turn-The-Page Books (United States)
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Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America
Souder, William
New York: North Point Press, 2004. Quarter bound in brown cloth. Black marker remainder dot to bottom page edges, else a fine, crisp copy. Signed on half title page. 367 pp. Illustrations. Notes, bibliography, index. Dust jacket, with slight rubs, in fresh protective mylar. "Before Audubon, ornithological illustrations depicted scaled-down birds perched in static poses. Wheeling beneath storm-wracked skies or ripping flesh from freshly killed prey, Audubon's life-size birds looked as if they might fly screeching off the page. The wildness in the images matched the untamed spirit in Audubon -- a self-taught painter and self-anointed aristocrat who, with his buckskins and long hair, wanted to be seen as both a hardened frontiersman and a cultured man of science. In truth, neither his friends nor his detractors ever knew exactly who Audubon was or where he came from. Tormented by a fog of ambiguities surrounding his birth, he reinvented himself ceaselessly, creating a life as dramatic as his fictionalizations of it. But when he came east at thirty-eight -- broke and desperate to find a publisher for his Birds -- he ran squarely into a scientific establishment still wedded to convention and suspicious of the brash newcomer and his grandiose claims. It took Audubon fifteen years to prevail in both his project and his vision. How he triumphed and what drove him is the subject of this gripping narrative.". Signed. First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 8vo. ( more information)
Offered by Turn-The-Page Books (United States)
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Under a Wild Sky John James Audubon and The Making of The Birds of America
Souder, William
New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Fine/Fine. 2004. 1st Edition 1st Printing Size=6.5"x9.5" Hard Cover w/Dust Jacket 367pgs(Index) Clean, tight & bright. NO ink names, bookplates, DJ tears etc. Price unclipped. ISBN 0865476713 Keywords: Ornithology, Ornithologists, Birds of America, Biography. ( more information)
Offered by Ed Conroy Bookseller - edconroybooks.com (United States)
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Under a Wild Sky
Souder, William
New York: North Point Pr. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), 2004. 367 pp., b/w illus., notes, bib., index. John James Audubon and the making of THE BIRDS OF AMERICA. Not price-clipped, not ex-lib., signed by author on half-title p. & dated July, 2004.. ISBN: 0-86547-671-3. Signed by Author. First Edition. Half-Cloth. Fine/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Audubon, The Birds of America. ( more information)
Offered by Ross & Haines (United States)
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Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of America
Souder, William
New York: North Point Press, 2004 368 pps, index. Black and white illustrtaions. Tight, unread copy. Lightest rubbing to jacket surface. Presents Audubon as a complex individual: a loving but distracted husband; a driven artist often plagued by doubts; a scrupulous observer of nature who thought nothing of fabricating some of his written material for dramatic effect....this account shows how much Audubon was shaped by the deep paradoxes of the time and place in which he lived. . First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. ( more information)
Offered by Diaskari Books - a member of Ibooknet (United Kingdom)
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Under a wild sky : John James Audubon and the making of the Birds of America
Souder, William (1949-)
New York : North Point Press, 2004. 1st Edition. Subjects; Audubon, John James, 1785-1851. Birds of America. Ornithologists--United States--Biography. Fine cloth copy in an equally fine dw. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new. ( more information)
Offered by MW Books Ltd. (Ireland)
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Under a wild sky : John James Audubon and the making of the Birds of America
Souder, William (1949-)
New York : North Point Press, 2004. 1st Edition. Subjects; Audubon, John James, 1785-1851. Birds of America. Ornithologists--United States--Biography. Fine cloth copy in an equally fine dw. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new. ( more information)
Offered by MW Books Ltd. (Ireland)
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