The Birds of Australia (Gould)

[1] It was the first comprehensive survey of the birds of Australia and included descriptions of 681 species, 328 of which were new to Western science and were first described by Gould.

[2] Gould and his wife Elizabeth née Coxen travelled to Australia from England in 1838 to prepare the book.

Elizabeth, who had illustrated several of his earlier works, made hundreds of drawings from specimens for publication in The Birds of Australia.

[5][6] The accompanying letterpress descriptions of the birds are authored by John Gould and were printed by the firm R. & J. E.

Of the original 250, 175 of those are now accounted for in institutional collections, and the remaining 75 are in private hands or have been broken up to be sold as individual prints.