Fine Books and Manuscripts

8 volumes, royal 8vo (270 x 180 mm). Half-titles, 500 hand-colored lithographic plates. (A few leaves lightly browned or spotted.) Contemporary half green morocco, marbled boards, spines gilt, top edges gilt, others uncut (Some light rubbing or wear to extremities, a few hinges reinforced). Later edition. The Lockwood edition represents the last octavo edition printed from the original stones; they were destroyed in a fire in a Philadelphia warehouse after 1970. Roe Lockwood & Son were publishers of the second folio edition of Audubon's Birds, which was not commercially successful due to the outbreak of the Civil War. Lockwood was the major creditor for the second edition, however, and gained the publication rights and lithographic stones for Audubon's works. It is from these stones that this octavo edition was printed. Ayer/Zimmer pp.25-26; Nissen IVB 52; Wood p.209.