Provenance

Formerly owned by Victor Morris Tyler, great-grandson of John James Audubon, this collection was purchased from Mary A. Benjamin in 1949.

Preferred citation

Cite as: John James Audubon, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Recatalogued by Ann Reinhardt, 2002.

Alternate formats available

The Audubon Papers are also available on microfilm (Film 1301).

Related material

The American Philosophical Society Library's catalog lists 123 items related to John James Audubon. Included in our manuscript collection are the papers of George Ord, some papers of Charles Waterton, and in the print materials the paper John Bachman wrote in Audubon's defense, as read before the Boston Society of Natural History, February 5, 1834.

Other major manuscript collections are held at the American Museum of Natural History, New York; The Audubon Museum, Henderson, Kentucky; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; Princeton University Library; and Yale University Library (particularly the Morris Tyler Family Collection).

Bibliography

In addition to the above mentioned Howard Corning work he also edited:The principle biographies include:

Naval History Note

The Audubon Papers contain at least one item which may be of interest to naval historians:

Audubon, John James. Letter to Victor G. Audubon. 1842 July 17. Reports on travel in the United States. News of Washington. Saw Wilkes sketches, etc. 3 pages.

Early American History Note

This fairly large collection (over 200 letters) of John James Audubon material consists primarily of John’s correspondence with his wife Lucy and son Victor. The collection shows a personal side of Audubon who kept his wife and son informed of all aspects of his work and travels. The letters to his wife – “my dearest friend” – are particularly affectionate and open.

John James Audubon was the best-known ornithologist in the nineteenth century and perhaps still is today. Audubon’s rise to fame was anything but clear-cut, however. He was born in Haiti in 1793. His father was a French naval officer who met Audubon’s mother while stationed in Haiti – and while already with a wife in France. Audubon was accepted by his father’s wife, however, and he spent much of his youth in France with her. After emigrating to the United States in 1803 to take over his father’s farm in Mill Grove, Pennsylvania and to avoid the Napoleonic Wars, Audubon soon developed a method for posing and painting birds. Seeking greater economic opportunity, he moved to Kentucky in 1808, setting up as a merchant. Financial difficulty forced him to continue moving throughout the Greater Ohio River Valley and Louisiana, plying a variety of trades to keep his family afloat. During this time, Audubon continued to collect and paint bird specimens in an attempt to create the most complete collection of North American birds ever assembled.

By 1824, Audubon began seeking a publisher for his paintings and began promoting his work in established intellectual circles. He traveled first to Philadelphia, where he was rebuffed, and then to England. After finding a captive audience and publisher in England, Audubon’s The Birds of America, a massive four volume elephant folio published in 1831, established him as an international sensation and financial success. Audubon continued to produce works of ornithology and branched out beyond birds in works such as Quadrupeds. Like many who ultimately find popular success, the scientific and artistic world eventually became critical of Audubon’s work and technique. His popular success, however, never faltered, and his work continues to be admired and studied.

The early portion (1826-1829) of the collection at the APS contains letters written while Audubon was in Britain working on Birds of North America. The collection provides a clear picture of both Audubon’s time in England working on the publication of his masterpiece and his close relationship with his wife and son. This correspondence casts Audubon in a different light than normal. Audubon has been depicted as a remarkable scientist, naturalist, adventurer, and artist. What comes out through his correspondence to his family while in England is how much he was a calculating businessman and self-promoter as well as artist and scientist. Audubon saw his Birds of North America not only as an important scientific work but also a commercial venture, and the story of Audubon the entrepreneur is depicted in this collection.

The bulk of the correspondence from 1829-1834 involves Audubon’s life during his return to America. Among this collection are accounts of Audubon’s travels throughout North America, often the south, as he sought additional drawings to finish Birds of North America. These too are often personal letters written to either his wife or son Victor. These letters often convey observations of the areas he visited and describe some of the natural life he observed. An account of his trip to Richmond in October, 1831, for instance, makes reference to the “Negro disturbances,” a reference to Nat Turner’s Rebellion, as well as providing a description of the city and the surroundings. Most of the collection’s later letters (1834 and 1841-1844) are from Audubon, stationed in America, writing to his son Victor, who was serving as Audubon’s business agent in England.

The collection also contains a significant fragment of Audubon’s account of his time working in New Orleans as a painter for hire in 1822. The document, sold to the APS by Audubon’s family after his death, is marked “not used and not for general reading as we decided.” In it, Audubon recounts a wild tale to his wife in which a beautiful and wealthy woman in New Orleans requested he paint her nude under very strange and secretive circumstances. The story of this encounter is told in Richard Rhodes’ John James Audubon.

As with most of Audubon’s correspondence, many of the letters contained in the collection have been printed in edited volumes