John McEwen

In defence of John James Audubon 

The great artist and ornithologist who produced the magnificent Birds of America is now being shunned as a bird-slaughtering white supremacist

‘Black-backed Gull’, from The Birds of America, painted by Audubon in 1833. [Alamy]
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  • Audubon at Sea: The Coastal & Transatlantic Adventures of John James Audubon

    edited by Christopher Irmscher and Richard J. King

    University of Chicago Press, pp. 334, £24

The text of this well illustrated book is mostly John James Audubon’s, from journals unpublished in his lifetime. Part I describes his 1826 voyage from America to England to set in motion the great task – which would take 11 years – of fundraising for the printing of his mighty double elephant folio book in four volumes, The Birds of America.

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