Beschreibung:

AUDUBON, John James Autograph Letter Signed ("John J. Audubon") to William Rathbone. Edinburgh, 26 March 1827. 2 pages, 8vo, written on recto and verso, with integral address panel, docketed . AUDUBON SEEKS HELP TO CORRECT HIS EARLIEST PRINTS OFF THE PRESS Trying to realize the publication of the first part of the Birds of America , Audubon writes to inform William Rathbone of a box forwarded to him by Mr. Lizars "containing 10 copies of my first number but unfortunately the Second Plate is wrongly named, in each...case." The naturalist therefore requests that the wrong names be scratched out "and the right names put in a fine plain hand." On the verso of Audubon's letter is a transcription of Audubon's corrected title for the yellow billed cuckoo, wrongly named the black billed cuckoo. The connection between Audubon and Rathbone was indeed a strong one, both personally and commercially. Audubon arrived in Europe in July 1826, carrying some four hundred original drawings for which he intended to find a purchaser or a publisher. He also brought with him various letters of introduction, including one from an old acquaintance, Vincent Nolte, addressed to Richard Rathbone of Liverpool, the brother of the letter's recipient. Importantly, it brought the naturalist into immediate friendly relations with and patronage by an influential family of merchants, which also included both William Rathbone and their father William Rathbone Sr., an amateur collector with an interest in birds. Developing particularly close ties with the ladies of the Rathbone family at 'Greenbank,' Mrs. William Rathbone Sr., the 'Queen Bee,' later became his first subscriber. When Audubon came to write his Ornithological Biography , he named one of the birds the Rathbone warbler ( Sylvia rathbonia ) in gratitude to his sponsors, writing "when the remembrance of all the unmerited kindness and unlooked-for friendship which I have received from the Rathbones of Liverpool comes to my mind, I might produce a volume of thanks." Audubon had engaged the services of William Home Lizars at Edinburgh in November 1826 for the engraving and coloring of the plates to this monumental work. On 3 February 1827, he exhibited the first series of his engraved plates at the Royal Institution of Edinburgh to universal acclaim. Lizars engraved the first ten of Audubon's plates, but due to conflicts of interest and the engraver's colorists going on strike, most of these were subsequently retouched, colored and reissued by his successors in London, Robert Havell Sr. and Jr., who eventually brought the work to successful completion eleven years later. Not in Letters of John James Audubon (ed. H. Corning, 1930).