Great Auk - Hardcover

Fuller, Errol

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810963914 ISBN 13: 9780810963917

Publisher: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1999

Synopsis

Pp. 448, more than 400 plates - 200 in color. Publisher's blue cloth, lettered in gilt on the spine, color pictorial dust jacket, sm folio (12 x 9 3/4 inches). This is the first American edition. Records show the Great Auk became extinct in 1844. This volume covers all aspects of its morphology, natural history, life cycles and prehistory. It also contains a detailed record of possible sightings long its recorded extinction date. There is a catalog of every known specimen and surviving eggs.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Last reliably spotted in 1844 off the lonely Icelandic island of Eldey, the mysterious, flightless Great Auk continues to exert a powerful hold on humankind's imagination-more than 150 years after the bird became extinct. This stunning book, with more than 400 beguiling pictures, over half in full color, covers every aspect of the Great Auk's natural history. It catalogues every known specimen and surviving egg; chronicles the bird's frequent appearances in art and literature; and relates delicious scraps of lore, including tales of the many curious characters who became involved in the Great Auk's tragic disappearance. Nature lovers will be enchanted by this astonishingly comprehensive record of a species that is gone forever-yet surely not forgotten. Over 400 illustrations, over 200 in full color, 911/4 x 1133/4" ERROL FULLER is a painter of sporting subjects, particularly boxing, and a writer whose interest in the curio si ties of natural history has produced two previous books on extinct birds. He lives in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.

From Publishers Weekly:

Three hundred years ago, for a few weeks each year, Icelandic seafarers could marvel at hordes of great auks as they waddled ashore. By 1850, the bird was extinct. Painter and amateur natural historian Fuller (The Lost Birds of Paradise) has produced a weighty and beautiful tome on the auk (also known as the garefowl), its natural history and its posthumous life in the human imagination. The auk's head alone merits, and receives, several pages of images and explanations: a grooved, fish-shaped beak, hazel eyes and a patch of white between them gave the bird an awkward, forlorn dignity--while its upright walk made it rare visual kin to the penguin. Unable to flee marauding Icelanders, the last known pair of auks were killed for food on a tiny island in 1844. After its extinction, the auk became improbably famous among urbane 19th-century readers, who made it (along with the dodo) a byword for extinction. Stuffed auks and auk eggs (and fakes of both) sold for high sums, while trading cards, cigarettes and whiskey bore the name and image of the dead bird. Fuller devotes about half his volume to a verbal and pictorial catalogue of the 78 known stuffed great auks, along with the 75 surviving eggs. Among the shorter sections are two describing the islands and the people who matter most to the garefowls' sad story. Over 200 color and 200 black and white illustrations include paintings, engravings and photographs of stuffed models displaying the enigmatic species. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harry N Abrams Inc
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0810963914
• ISBN 13: 9780810963917
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448