George Edwards: The Bedell and his Birds

The Black-Footed Penguins

The four volumes of Edwards’ A Natural History of Birds were published between 1743 and 1751. The single-handed labour Edwards put into their production was remarkable, especially as he produced both English and French editions. Edwards turned his house in the College into a studio and workshop where he etched and printed his plates. The College had never seen anything like it, but the physicians supported Edwards by promising subscriptions for the book.  On publication Edwards was immediately established as a leading ornithologist.

The Little Green Parrot

Edwards became exhausted by the effort of producing the books. He wrote ‘declining age and growing incapacities are reason for me to discontinue proceeding in this work’, but volumes of Gleanings of Natural History followed in 1758, 1760 and 1764. The new title emphasised a more diverse subject matter but the numbering of the illustrations continued from the first series. In total the seven books contained 362 illustrations of wildlife alongside Edwards’ detailed descriptions of each creature.

The Sloth

Edwards published only foreign species, as he felt English birds were recorded elsewhere. Even so, there were few well-illustrated books on birds in English at the time. The most authoritative was Francis Willughby’s Ornithologia (1676), but even Willughby had complained about the poor standard of the illustrations. Eleazar Albin’s A Natural History of Birds (1731-38) contained attractive but lifeless engravings of birds and Edwards was critical of Albin’s accuracy. Edwards’ main rival was his friend, the naturalist Mark Catesby (1683-1749) who depicted American birds in his Natural History of Carolina (1743) and taught Edwards how to etch.

Edwards’ work was inevitably eclipsed by a surge of new knowledge in the years that followed, but his work never drifted in to the oblivion he imagined. The works are valued today as much for Edwards’ own vivid descriptions and writing style as for his ornithological accuracy.