Audubon's Birds of America

The University of Michigan was established in Detroit in 1817, even though Michigan was not admitted to the Union until 1837, the year that the University moved to Ann Arbor.

At the time, the Board of Regents outnumbered the combined faculty (2) and students (7) by 10 members. When the Regents met on 5 February 1838, they decided to purchase a copy of The Birds of America for $970, which included the accompanying text, the Ornithological Biography.

New York City bookdealer, William A. Colman, handled this purchase. In April 1838, Coleman wrote to Audubon asking about duplicate and missing Plates in the set that was intended to go to the University. On 25 May from London, Audubon’s replied: “[If ] I find any of the plates you want they will be sent to you forthwith….My work will be entirely finished by the end of Next Month, our Engraving and printing establishment will then be broken up, and few [Plates] will indeed [be available to anyone] who has not Subscribed to the “Birds of America”!”

In July 1838, Coleman received the Plates needed to complete the University’s set, and presumably, he arranged for the set to be either bound or rebound. The work was delivered to the Regents in March 1839.

Historian Andrew Ten Brook recalled in 1875: “It is now thirty-five years that the leaves of these ponderous volumes have been turned over constantly by students and visitors, excepting only a few years during which they were laid aside in the hope that by avoiding wear they might be transmitted as the property of the library to distant ages.”

William W. Bishop, University Librarian from 1915 to 1941, recalled that, when he was a student in 1889, the volumes were “exposed to inspection and handling by every visitor to the art gallery in the library.” Presumably, the art gallery was located in the old wooden General Library. In late 1914, the Rare Book Room was created, and The Birds of America was moved to it. The present Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library replaced the General Library building in 1920.

Little is known about how the University’s Plate volumes were originally bound, except they were in four volumes. The present rebinding was performed in 1933–1934 under the supervision of William C. Hollands, head of the University’s printing and binding department. The volumes were disbound, and individual prints were repaired. They were then rebound into eight volumes containing 50 Plates each, except for the last two, which have 62 and 73 Plates, respectively.

-Text by Cathleen A. Baker