The Paper Zoo

For many, their first experience of the natural world is in the pages of books and in library collections--a Paper Zoo. This stunning book gathers together a wide range of beautiful nature illustrations from the British Library’s collections, including manuscripts, prints and drawings, and rare printed books, and featuring items from all around the world. With striking images of butterflies, beetles, spiders, animals, shells, fish and birds, the pages bring readers into contact with some of the world’s most renowned natural history illustrators, such as Audubon and Catesby, and on expeditions to discover the lesser known rare finds as well. The text traces the story of the art of natural history from the Renaissance through the great age of exploration to the 19th century, to demonstrate how the collaboration between the fields of art and science has rendered such exquisite forms. The plates, all taken from books, are organized into several themed sections, though not on strict taxonomic grounds, but rather on broader themes of exotic, native, domestic, and paradoxical (with reference to what the species were at that time—for what is native now may well once have been exotic).