Audubon at Scale: Inside the Double-Elephant Folio of Birds of America

During the pandemic, I dabbled in birding, and ever since, I’ve noticed more and more references to birds across cultural media—from literature to music. With the holiday season fully in swing, I’ve heard “The Twelve Days of Christmas” echoing through stores bedecked with evergreen garlands and festooned with sparkling ornaments. Until this year, though, I had never really paid attention to just how many birds appear in its lyrics, especially in the seventh verse:

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five gold rings
Four calling birds, three French hens
Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree

With origins in eighteenth-century England, this Christmas carol features avian species typical of Europe. But what would this song look like if it drew on birds a bit closer to home? Given my affection for Audubon’s Birds of America—one of the best-known and most beloved works of natural history—I began to wonder how this classic carol might sound with an American and Audubonian twist:

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five gold rings
Four whip-poor-wills, three marsh hens
Two ground doves and a regal wild turkey

Give it a listen:

These are but six of the 435 hand-colored plates depicting 489 species of birds in Audubon’s expansive work—the most impressive iteration being the double-elephant folio issued in four gargantuan volumes. “Double elephant” refers to the size of the paper itself, the largest handmade paper available when the plates were printed between 1827 and 1838. Each sheet measures approximately 26 inches wide by 38 inches tall; once bound, the books become even larger. These volumes were never meant to be read in the traditional sense. They were meant to be displayed, admired, and awed over—grand works of art in their own right.

Audubon selected this unusually large format so he could create life-sized, highly naturalistic renderings of birds that also included leaves, branches, shorelines, and bodies of water unique to North America. He was determined to capture the movement of living birds as they flitted from branch to branch or arrowed in a deadly dive toward their prey. To do so, he constructed elaborate studio dioramas, using wire and other supports to position deceased specimens in dynamic postures. Contemporary viewers praised him for the hyper-realism of his drawings and his ability to capture the diverse splendor of American flora and fauna, still largely unknown to the broader world in the early nineteenth century. Not all of them hit the mark—the long-necked whooping crane and flamingo stretch into uncanny contortions to fit on the page—but even so, the liveliness and saturated color of these avian portraits continue to dazzle. They achieved that brilliance, in part, thanks to the superb engraving work initially of William H. Lizars and then Robert Havell, who transposed Audubon’s drawings onto copper plates, and also to the team of colorists who enlivened each print with rich, layered hues.

Creating such astonishingly large books with hand-colored plates was an expensive endeavor. As was common for nineteenth-century natural-history publications, Audubon relied on a subscriber model to fund the project. Roughly 300 subscribers prepaid to receive plates in serial installments, giving Audubon the financial stability he needed to proceed. These subscribers were almost entirely wealthy individuals, as a subscription cost about $1,000—roughly $35,000 in 2025 dollars. Institutions also subscribed, including the Library of Congress in 1830 and the next year in Philadelphia, the Academy of Natural Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Once all 435 plates arrived, the subscribers themselves arranged for the binding, most often in four-volume sets. In total, about 200 complete folios were produced; just over 100 survive today.

Here in the Rare Book Division, we are fortunate to have two complete sets of Birds of America, one of which is bound in four volumes. Its striking marbled endpapers are themselves noteworthy: each is made by adhering two elephant-folio endpapers together to match the gargantuan size of the plates.

It takes at least two people to lift one of these massive books. And that had me wondering: Just how much do these things actually weigh? With the help of my colleague Patrick Hastings, we set off, scale in hand, to find out. They came in at a whopping 193.6 pounds—approximately 13 roasted turkeys, 4,425 candy canes, or 774 snowballs.

Not every volume weighs the same. Although the work was conceived in groupings of 100 plates, the last volume contains 134, making it slightly heavier than the others:

• 48.4 pounds
• 45.8 pounds
• 44.4 pounds
• 55.0 pounds

In printing Birds of America, Audubon achieved a feat many believed impossible because of its scale and cost. Rare-book collectors continue to prize the work as a jewel—if not the crown jewel—of their collections. The allure is understandable, and the weight of its significance unmistakable. Perhaps, then, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” does deserve an American-Audubonian makeover to honor what this monumental publication has come to symbolize for collectors, natural historians, and everyday readers alike.

In the spirit of Birds of America, I’d like to wish you a pheasant holiday season!

Sources and Further Reading

Audubon, J. (2022). Audubon at Sea: The Coastal & Transatlantic Adventures of John James Audubon. (C. Irmscher and R. King, Eds.). University of Chicago Press.

Audubon, J. (1827–1838). The Birds of America. John James Audubon.

Souder, W. (2014). Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of America. Milkweed Editions.

Steiner, B. (2003). Audubon Art Prints: A Collector’s Guide to Every Edition. University of South Carolina.

 

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