Curator’s Reading

Essays, books, websites, and other resources about Audubon and The Birds of America

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What Do We Do about Audubon? // Suggest An Addition

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Getting Started: Introducing The Birds of America

Mike Cummins, “Audubon’s ‘Birds of America’ at Yale: Creating a Masterwork One Feather at a time,” in Yale News, June 30, 2015

LISTEN: Audubon’s Birds of America at the Beinecke Antiquarian bookseller William Reese, Yale class of 1977, discusses American naturalist and artist John James Audubon’s monumental work The Birds of America. (28:45)

John James Audubon’s The Birds of America @ audubon.org

Audubon’s The Birds of America: The Audubon Society Baby Elephant Folio, Abbeville Press, 2005.

John James Audubon, Writings and Drawings, New York: Library of America, 1999.

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Digging Deeper: Histories of The Birds of America

Susanne M. Low, A Guide to Audubon’s Birds of America: A Concordance Containing Current Names of the Birds, Plate Names with Descriptions of Plate Variants, A description of the Bien Edition, and Corresponding Indexes, New Haven: William Reese Co. & Donald A. Heald, 2002.

Waldemar H. Fries, The Double Elephant Folio: The Story of Audubon’s Birds of America, Amherst: Massachusetts, Zenaida Publishing, c2006.

Ronnie C. Tyler, Audubon’s Great National Work : The Royal Octavo edition of The Birds of America, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

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What Do We Do about Audubon?: Reconsidering Audubon’s Life and Legacy, Reconsidering The Birds of America

J. Drew Lanham, “What Do We Do about John James Audubon?”, Audubon Magazine, Spring 2021.

Emily Raboteau, “Spark Bird: Bearing Witness to New York’s Endangered Species,” Orion Magazine, Spring 2021.

Gregory Nobles, “The Myth of John James Audubon,” Audubon Magazine, Summer 2020.

Matthew R. Halley, “Audubon’s Bird of Washington: Unravelling the Fraud that Launched The Birds of America,” Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club, 140(2):110-141 (2020).

Ted Loos, “Kerry James Marshall’s Black Birds Take Flight in a New Series,” New York Times, July 29, 2020; Black and Part Black Birds in America at Zwirner.

Audubon magazine’s Illustrated Aviary: Contemporary artists reimagine The Birds of America

Ann Raver, “The Dark Side of Audubon’s Era, and His Work,” New York Times, March 30, 1997

What’s in a Name: Reading and Resources

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Suggest an addition

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Image: Plan of Minnie’s Land from the Audubon Family Papers