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1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt
1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt

1882 Rare Ornithology Book ~ Our Native Songsters, Illustrated by Anne Pratt

$275 USD - $275 USD
$275 USD
$275 USD - $275 USD
$275 USD

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An unusually attractive Victorian edition of Anne Pratt’s celebrated ornithological work, complete with 72 full-page coloured plates and preserved in a scarce decorative publisher’s cloth binding.

Author: Anne Pratt.
Title: Our Native Songsters.
Publisher: London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, [1882].
Edition: Later Victorian edition; undated on the title page, with publisher’s catalogue dated 1 October 1882.
Language: English.
Pages: viii, 350 pages + publisher’s catalogue.
Size: 6 x 4.5 inches.
Binding: Very good and uncommon original publisher’s blue-green cloth binding, elaborately decorated in black with ivy borders and a circular foliage vignette to the front board, further embellished with two gilt birds. Spine lettered in gilt with black bird and decorative motifs, retaining the publisher’s SPCK device. Light rubbing and wear to extremities and spine ends as shown, but the binding remains firm, bright and particularly attractive. Small pictorial bookplate to the front pastedown. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good content, complete and well preserved, with occasional light foxing and age toning, principally to the preliminary leaves and scattered margins. Pages remain generally clean, bright and firmly bound.
Illustrations: Complete with 72 full-page coloured plates depicting British and European songbirds, including thrushes, blackbirds, orioles, wrens, warblers and numerous other species. The plates retain particularly pleasing colour. 

Estimate: $300–350 USD.

The book:

Our Native Songsters is Anne Pratt’s beautifully illustrated survey of the songbirds familiar to nineteenth-century British readers. Combining accessible natural history with observations on birdsong, behaviour, migration and habitat, the work treats thrushes, blackbirds, warblers, wrens, orioles, swallows and many other species. First published in the early 1850s, it became sufficiently popular to be repeatedly reissued by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 

The great attraction of the book is its extensive suite of 72 full-page coloured bird plates, which places it among the most appealing popular ornithological books of the Victorian period. This copy is especially desirable for its unusual decorative cloth binding, with black ivy ornament, gilt birds and a striking circular foliage device, a considerably more elaborate treatment than the plainer cloth bindings often encountered.

The author:

Anne Pratt (1806–1893) was a British natural-history writer and illustrator whose accessible books on botany and ornithology introduced generations of Victorian readers to the close observation of plants and birds. Her prolific output included Wild Flowers, Our Native Songsters and numerous other works intended to make natural history approachable to a broad audience.

Pratt’s books are particularly admired today for the marriage of scientific observation and decorative colour illustration. At a time when formal scientific institutions offered women relatively limited opportunities, her widely circulated publications gave her an important place in the popularization of nineteenth-century natural history.