America's Other Audubon - Signed Copy

Nearly everyone is familiar with John James Audubon and his seminal color-plate book, The Birds of America. But few people are aware of another monumental volume of artwork, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio. Inspired by a display of Audubon’s paintings at the 1876 World’s Fair in Philadelphia, 29-year-old amateur naturalist and artist Genevieve Jones began working on a companion volume to The Birds of America, illustrating the nests and eggs that Audubon omitted. Her brother collected the nests and eggs, her father paid for the publishing, and Genevieve learned lithography and began illustrating the specimens. When Genevieve died suddenly of typhoid fever, her family labored for seven years to finish the project in her memory. For the first time, America’s Other Audubon chronicles the story behind the making of this extraordinary 19th-century book. Joy Kiser has been friends with the Jones ancestors for 14 years and has access to family photographs and documents that the general public has never seen. The Joneses’ story has never been fully told and no other author is better prepared to tell it. The Smithsonian Institution Libraries holds two of the original copies of America’s Other Audubon.

Joy M. Kiser began her professional career as the librarian for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in 1995. In 2001, she moved to the Washington, DC area to become the librarian for National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). She now works as a writer/editor for the Federal Government.  Hardcover; 192 pages; 69 color photos; 6 black & white photos.

Museum Provenance

Founded in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries is a system of 20 branch libraries and central support services that include a Book Conservation Laboratory and an Imaging Center.

Every Smithsonian purchase will arrive with a museum provenance card explaining how it is adapted from or inspired by an object or objects in our collection.