Book of the Week: The Illustrations of The Ibis

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In our last post, our featured user Mathew Louis named The Ibis as his favorite title in BHL. Thus, we decided to feature this entire series as our “book of the week” this week. Not only is The Ibis full of valuable information on birds, it’s also loaded with beautiful illustrations, many of which are featured in Mathew Louis’ website: http://sites.google.com/site/mmslouisb/theibis.

The website also gives some interesting background on the publication, and on one of the artists involved in the work:

The Ibis is the organ of publication of the British Ornithologists’ Union. It was long issued as a small, octavo edition, but more recently, it has appeared in a larger format. Originally the volumes were numerated as a series, each of which being completed by six volumes for that many years, but this method was later abandoned in favor of numbering the volumes according to each consecutive year.Keulemans contributed to The Ibis every year from 1869–1909. In the 1869 edition (Second Series–Volume V) his name appeared as the lithographer, not as the colorist, on a number of plates.”

Slightly abandoning our usual book of the week structure, we’re spending the rest of this post featuring many of the beautiful illustrations in this work. Enjoy!

View Full Size Image of these green BirdsView Full Size Image of these Yellow BirdsView Full Size Image of these red birdsView Full Size Image of these blue birds

See more work by John Gerrard Keulemans in BHL.

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Grace Costantino served as the Outreach and Communication Manager for the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 2014 to 2021. In this capacity, she developed and managed BHL's communication strategy, oversaw social media initiatives, and engaged with the public to excite audiences about the wealth of biodiversity heritage available in BHL. Prior to her role as Outreach and Communication Manager, Grace served as the Digital Collections Librarian for Smithsonian Libraries and as the Program Manager for BHL.