Illegitimate, half-French, half-American, poorly educated, chronically short of money and obsessed with birds, Audubon came to England in 1826 to find a publisher for his extraordinary paintings. He insisted that they must be reproduced on double-elephant folio paper - sheets almost 40 inches by 30 - so that even the largest species could be represented life size, and no-one in America had been prepared to tackle such a gigantic task. Drawing on Audubon's journals, letters to his wife and the archives of the families with whom he stayed and worked, Duff Hart-Davis recreates Audubon's twelve years in Britain in search of patrons and publishers. It is an extraordinary story of an obsessive genius and his observations of people, places and events in early nineteenth-century England and Scotland. 'An attractive account of a publishing story that will be enjoyed both by specialists and by those who don't know one end of a Roseate Spoonbill from another' Daily Telegraph
- ISBN10 0753817888
- ISBN13 9780753817889
- Publish Date 1 July 2004 (first published 11 September 2003)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 June 2008
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Orion Publishing Co
- Imprint Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
- Format Paperback
- Pages 216
- Language English