LECTURE ON 19TH-CENTURY NATURALIST OPENS EXHIBITION

"Short-billed Toucans" from John Gould's Supplement to the First Edition of a Monograph of the Ramphastidae, London, 1855.

The Bryn Mawr College Library offers an early taste of spring with its new exhibition "Luxuriant Nature smiling round": Illustrated Botanical and Ornithological Books from the Ethelinda Schaefer Castle Collection. The exhibition will open Tuesday, Feb. 7, with a lecture by Robert McCracken Peck, senior fellow of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, at 4:30 p.m. in Carpenter Library 21. His lecture, "John Gould and His World," will focus on the most important British producer of illustrated bird books in the 19th century.

Peck has published extensively on natural history and the work of 18th- and 19th-century naturalists, and has served as consultant and historian on a number of BBC and PBS documentaries. Among his books is Land of the Eagle: A Natural History of North America, the companion volume to the 1990 BBC/PBS series. He is also a noted photographer whose work has been published widely, and his exhibition of photographs documenting nomadic life in Central Asia has been shown in numerous museums, including the American Museum of Natural History. He has just returned from Australia, where he has been lecturing on John Gould's masterpiece, the 7-volume Birds of Australia, published between 1840 and 1848.

"Hibou," from Jacob Christian Schäffer's Elementa Ornithologica Iconibus vivis coloribus expressis illustrata. Ratisbon, 1774.

The exhibition, co-curated by Special Collections Head Eric Pumroy, history of art graduate student Rima Girnius and East Asian studies major Jennifer Barr '06, draws from the remarkable collection donated to Bryn Mawr in 1971 by Ethelinda Schaefer Castle, Class of 1908. "Castle was one of the 20th century's great female book collectors, and she had a special interest in illustrated plant and bird books," Pumroy says. "The exhibition will showcase a few of the landmark and stunningly beautiful books from the Castle Library, including four of John Gould's books, Pierre Joseph Redoute's Les Roses, Edward Lear's Parrots, the Hortus Floridus by the 17th-century Dutch artist Crispijn van de Passe, and Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology, the first illustrated bird book printed in the United States."

The exhibition will run through May 31 in the Class of 1912 Rare Book Rook of the Miriam Coffin Canaday. The hours are 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 1 to 4:30 p.m. on weekends, except for holidays and the College's spring break. For additional information, please call the Special Collections Department at 610-526-6576.

This exhibition has been produced in conjunction with a grant from the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation of Honolulu. The grant has underwritten the cataloging of nearly 1500 volumes in the Castle Collection, and the creation of an image database of representative illustrations from the natural history books.

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