THE BEDSIDE BOOK OF BIRDS. An Avian Miscellany.
London: Published by Bloomsbury Books, 2007. Book design by CS Richardson. Royal 8vo. pp.xix + 370.with colour and black & white illustrations. original green cloth hardcover in pictorial dust wrapper. A fine copy. Item #194840
Featured in the vast majority of mythologies and religions, birds are generally associated with creativity and the human spirit. From the Christian dove to Quetzalcoatl (the Aztec plumed serpent), and from Raven Man to Plato's description of the soul growing wings and feathers, birds have represented the soul in contrast to the body, the spiritual as opposed to the earthly.
Beautifully produced, the book contains more than one hundred illustrations, from early cave paintings to Audubon, Morris and Gould, Inuit and works created in the twentieth century. Writings by naturalists W.H. Hudson, Laurens van der Post, Peter Matthiessen & Barry Lopez, and by classical authors such as Shakespeare, Coleridge, Melville & Poe. There is also a rich seam of contemporary work by Jorge Luis Borges, Ted Hughes, Italo Calvino, Bruce Chatwin & Haruki Murakami, among many others.
Price: $50.00