John Gould Pelican mug

The Birds of Australia was a book written by John Gould and published in seven volumes between 1840 and 1848. It was the first comprehensive survey of the birds of Australia and included descriptions of 681 species, 328 of which were new to science and were first described by Gould. Gould and his wife Elizabeth travelled to Australia from England in 1838 to prepare the book. They spent a little under two years collecting specimens for the book. John travelled widely and made extensive collections of Australian birds and other fauna. Elizabeth, who had illustrated several of his earlier works, made hundreds of drawings from specimens for publication in The Birds of Australia The plates of the book were produced by lithography, Elizabeth produced 84 plates before she died in 1841, Edward Lear produced one, Waterhouse Hawkins contributed one and the remaining 595 plates were produced by H. C. Richter from Elizabeth's drawings and were published under his name. 250 sets of the seven-volume work were printed. Complete sets of original volumes recently sold at auction for more than A$350,000.