In the early 1840s, at the same time Audubon was producing the commercially successful octavo edition of his masterpiece, The Birds of America, he and his sons also began production of The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, an elephant folio of 150 lithographs meant to match the lavishness of the Birds. Unlike the double-elephant folio Birds, the Quadrupeds was produced entirely in the United States, making it the “largest single color plate book to be carried to a successful conclusion during the century ” (Reese). It took the Audubon family five years to publish the 150 plates and there were at that time three hundred subscribers. The book was the product of Audubon’s collaboration with John Bachman, a pastor who had studied quadrupeds since he was a young man and who was recognized as an authority on the subject in the United States.
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