Animals
Art, Science & Sound
Malini Roy, Cam Sharp Jones & Cheryl Tipp
British Library Publishing 2023
Hb, 352pp, £35, ISBN 9780712354332
This book reveals the natural history treasures of the British Library in superb art and highly interesting and informative text. The book covers the exhibition of the same name held at the British Library in London last year.
There is so much impressively beautiful material in the book showing the sheer international and historical scale of these holdings in our national collection, in terms of manuscripts and printed books, artwork, photographs, films, sound recordings and even X-ray photographs.
Early illustrated manuscripts and particularly mediæval bestiaries feature, being a first attempt to document animal life on Earth since the concept of Noah’s Ark. My favourite mediæval illustration is the elephant of Henry III, the first drawn from life in England.
Works by early writers on natural history include Aristotle, Pliny the Elder and Ulisse Aldrovandi. The earliest travelling naturalist illustrators include Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) showing tropical insects on food plants with eggs, pupæ and chrysalises, and reptiles.
Early naturalist illustrators include such well-known names as Albrecht Dürer, Athanasius Kircher, Mark Catesby, John James Audubon, John Gould and Alfred Russel Wallace, as well as lesser-known 18th-19thcentury artists including Elizabeth Denyer and Elizabeth Ann Kemp. Unique original illustrations include a modern album of tropical
