INTRODUCTION 17 
accuracy, for errors of various sorts and confused and 
conflicting statements are far too common. 
Of the more formal biographies of Audubon, the 
first to appear was a slender volume entitled Audubon: 
the Naturalist of the New World, by Mrs. Horace Steb- 
bing Roscoe St. John, published in England in 1856.° 
In the same year this work was expanded and reissued 
by the publishers who at that time had charge of the 
sale of Audubon’s works in America.® The American 
publishers explained in their edition that inasmuch as 
“the fair authoress in preparing her interesting sketch 
of Audubon . . . appears not to have been aware of 
the publication of his second great work, the Quadru- 
peds of North America (which had not been advertised, 
we believe, in Europe) they have taken the liberty of 
giving some account of it and making numerous ex- 
tracts from its pages.” *° Perhaps the most interesting 
or valuable things in this little volume at the present 
day are the woodcut on the title page showing Audu- 
bon’s house on the Hudson as it then appeared, sur- 
rounded by tall trees, and, inserted on a flyleaf, a list 
of all of Audubon’s published works and the prices at 
which they could be procured in New York just prior 
to the Civil War (see Note, Vol. I, p. 204). 
®In this year Charles Lanman, writer, and at a later time librarian of 
the Library of Congress, wrote to Victor Audubon as follows: “Are not 
you and your family willing now to let me write a book about your 
illustrious father? I feel confident that I could get up something very 
interesting and which would not only help the big work, but make money. 
I could have it brought out in handsome style, and should like to have 
well engraved a portrait and some half dozen views in Kentucky, Louisiana, 
and on the Hudson, Write me what you think about it.” Lanman’s letter 
is dated “Georgetown, D. C., Oct. 8, 1856”; on November 1 Victor 
Audubon replied, declining the proposal. 
® Messrs. C. S. Francis & Company, of 554 Broadway, New York. 
The publishers in this instance do not appear to have been better 
informed, for the text of the Quadrupeds, from which they quote, was 
written by John Bachman, and the first volume of it was issued in London 
in 1847; see Bibliography, No. 6. 
