Hist Of British Birds

With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy...' Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte's heroine was not alone in her enjoyment of Thomas Bewick's British Birds - since its first publication in 1797 it has become one of the best-loved classics of natural history. Bewick's masterful woodcuts are more than scientific records; each beady eye and jaunty pose betrays the artist's love of birds. This edition includes over 180 bird species, from garden favourites such as robins, blackbirds and finches, to predators such as the osprey and the majestic golden eagle. Each entry is illustrated with an engraving, and throughout the book are narrative vignettes typical of Bewick's playful, engaging style.

During the nineteenth century, Britain maintained a complex network of garrisons to manage its global empire. While these bases helped the British project power and secure trade routes, they served more than just a strategic purpose. During their tours abroad, many British officers engaged in formal and informal scientific research. In this ambitious history of ornithology and empire, Kirsten A. Greer tracks British officers as they moved around the world, just as migratory birds traversed borders from season to season. Greer examines the lives, writings, and collections of a number of ornithologist-officers, arguing that the transnational encounters between military men and birds simultaneously shaped military strategy, ideas about race and masculinity, and conceptions of the British Empire. Collecting specimens and tracking migratory bird patterns enabled these men to map the British Empire and the world and therefore to exert imagined control over it. Through its examination of the influence of bird watching on military science and soldiers' contributions to ornithology, Red Coats and Wild Birds remaps empire, nature, and scientific inquiry in the nineteenth-century world.

In this superb biography, Uglow tells the story of the farmers son who influenced book illustration for a century to come. It is a story of violent change, radical politics, lost ways of life, and the beauty of the wild--a journey to the beginning of a lasting obsession with the natural world.