Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847-1909)

Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847-1909)

Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise, and Ptilonorhynchidae, or Bower-birds. London: Taylor and Francis (text) and Mintern Brothers (plates) for Henry Sotheran & Co., 1891-1898. 8 parts, large 2° (563 x 387mm). Letterpress titles, preface, introduction, text, appendix, lists of contents and lists of plates, small format 'Notice to Subscribers' tipped in at front of part VI. 79 hand-coloured lithographic plates by W.Hart, after his own work and that of John Gould and J. G. Keulemans, 13 uncoloured illustrations in the text. (Small tears to upper blank margins of the first two plates in part VII as well as one of the accompanying text leaves, occasional light spotting, appreciably affecting the first and last plates in part II.) Original dark blue cloth-backed grey paper-covered pictorial boards, letterpress titling on upper cover beneath a large wood-engraved vignette illustration (occasional light spotting or light soiling, light scuffing to extremities, endpapers spotted).

A FINE COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION IN THE ORIGINAL PARTS OF 'THE LAST OF THE FINE BIRD BOOKS' (Fine Bird Books p. 107). Sharpe had appealed for subscribers for a proposed monograph on 'the Avifauna of Paupasia' in his preface to John Gould's Birds of New Guinea, which Sharpe had completed after Gould's death in 1881. The response to his appeal was clearly enthusiastic, for only three years later, the first part of the Paradiseidae was published. Some of the plates are printed from the stones used in the Birds of New Guinea, but 'a great number of the species are here figured for the first time', according to Sharpe's preface. Fine Bird Books p.107; Nissen IVB 865; Zimmer pp. 581-2. (8)