"The breathtaking art of John James Audubon's Birds of America has been celebrated throughout the world since it first appeared over 150 years ago. Less well known is Audubon's literary legacy: the magnificent volumes of natural history he published during his lifetime, as well as the remarkable journals, memoirs, and letters left behind at his death. In this volume, Audubon the great nature writer takes his rightful place alongside Audubon the artist."--BOOK JACKET.

"Here is the most comprehensive selection of Audubon's writings ever published, along with a spectacular portfolio of his drawings. The "Mississippi River Journal," the foremost record of an American artist's progress, details Audubon's first wilderness bird hunts; it is as fresh in its perceptions of the scenes and characters of the old South as of the forest and its creatures.

Selections from his "1826 Journal" follow Audubon to Europe, where after years of relative obscurity and financial distress his abilities were finally recognized. Audubon's masterwork, the five-volume Ornithological Biography, is here represented by 45 entries.

Charming, haunting, and violent by turns, these vivid, intimate portraits of the habits and habitats of american birds, from the curious mating rituals of the Wild Turkey to the sublime spectacle of the migration of the now vanished Passenger Pigeon, changed American nature writing forever."--BOOK JACKET.