24 drawings of of quadrupeds, birds, fishes, reptiles and insects by James Tait Black

24 pen and ink drawings of quadrupeds, birds, fish, reptiles and insects by James Tait Black. There are two suites of work (1840 and 1841) with the same title but with a different set of 12 illustrations. The bindings of the two sets are in very poor condition.

The illustrations from the 1840 suite, one of which is coloured, are:

• The elephant
• The tiger
• The gnu
• The jackall
• The bull
• The mule
• The cockatoo
• The ostrich
• The trout
• The chub
• The annulated snake
• The tiger swallowtail butterfly

The illustrations from the 1841 suite are:

• The sheep
• The mastiff
• The llama
• The hog
• The red deer
• The snowy owl
• The emu
• The giant heron
• The whale
• The sawfish
• The butterfly
• The great sea serpent

James Tait Black was born in 1826. He was a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd. The firm had been founded in 1807 by Adam and Charles Black in Edinburgh, and moved to the Soho district of London in 1889. In 1851, the firm bought the copyright of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels for £27,000.

Black was the husband of Mrs Janet Coutts Black who set up a literature prize in his name in 1919 after his death in 1911.

Today, the company is now part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, who purchased it in 2000. They are publishers of a range of reference works.

Open to bona fide researchers, but please contact repository for details in advance of visit.

Material acquired August 2011, Accession no: E2011.31

Compiled by Graeme D. Eddie, Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections.