The Birds of Australia, Volume 7 Geese, Ducks, Gulls, Terns, Noddies, Albatrosses, Petrels, Cormorants, Gannets, Penguins

About this book

This is a facsimile edition of John Gould's The Birds of Australia, Volume 7, originally published in 1848, and covers Geese, Ducks, Gulls, Terns, Noddies, Albatrosses, Petrels, Cormorants, Gannets, and Penguins.

The original works of John Gould remain perennially popular but are becoming increasingly rare. The facsimile reprints of Hill House Publishers represent a kind of restoration project where the immortal works of John Gould will be given a second life for the generations to come. The Hill House volumes are authentic facsimiles in that no camera was used in transferring the images from the British Museum of Natural History (BMNH) originals. As facsimiles, the books carry faithfully every spot, mark or stain of the originals. They also carry the original Museum Department of Zoology stamps, and librarian’s annotations, and what are thought to be pencilled plate numbers in John Gould’s own hand.

Each Hill House volume is:
- The same size as the original (Imperial Folio: 15" × 22" / 38.1 × 55.9 cm, W × H)
- Hand sewn, cased-in and bound between 4 mm boards which are covered in special Japanese Saifu cloth
- Gold stamped on the spine and front cover with 24 carat foil emboss of the Crown Cipher of the British Museum (Natural History).
- Blind embossed on the inner margin of the front boards while the end-papers are of a special wood-free heavy grade papers, overprinted with a generated repetitive pattern of the Museum’s library stamp.

Each copy is hand inspected by the printer’s quality control officer, individually numbered on the inside front board, hand wrapped in protective brown paper, and placed in its own crush-proof outer carton. The carton is then sealed, numbered and signed on the outside by the printer’s quality control officer. Thus, no two copies are exactly the same.

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