A General History of Quadrupeds. The Figures engraved on wood chiefly copied from the original of T. Bewick, by A. Anderson. With an Appendix, containing some American Animals not hitherto described.

New York: Printed by G. & E. Waite, No. 64, Maiden-Lane, 1804.

Price: $2,500.00


About the item

Anderson, Alexander. First American edition. x, 531 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Modern half brown morocco and cloth by Sangorski & Sutcliffe. Occasional light spotting, old signature of William S. Barnes on title. Hugo p. 24; S&S 5843; Roscoe, App. 5 (pp. 183-6); Pomeroy 144 (pp. 165-183).

Item #250349

The first American edition of a classic work, with the cuts re-engraved (usually in reverse) from the original Bewick edition. Dr. Alexander Anderson (1775-1870) was America’s first wood engraver. Pomeroy identifies the fourth edition as the source from which Anderson worked. “It was his major work in these first years.” The book is important in America as the means by which many Americans became familiar with the Bewick Quadrupeds, and also because Anderson and other engravers “in the future used Bewick’s illustrations as an encyclopedia from which they could draw in order to depict animals both native and foreign.” Roscoe devotes a substantial appendix to this edition.
Hugo, "Some of the cuts in this volume are truly wonderful copies of the originals, and an inspection of them would stagger not a few who are accustomed to attribute to Bewick every engraving of more than ordinary ability produced at the time when these were published."
Many Australian as well as American animals are delineated.