The Birds of Australia is a 12-volume ornithological handbook covering the birds of Australia. It was the second of three monumental illustrated works dealing with the avifauna of the continent and was published midway between the other two, the first being Gould's identically titled The Birds of Australia (1840âÂÂ1848), and the third the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (1990âÂÂ2006).
It was sponsored and authored by wealthy Australian amateur ornithologist Gregory Mathews, with considerable assistance from his collaborator and private secretary Tom Iredale, and was published by H. F. & G. Witherby of London over a 17-year period from 1910 to 1927. The text and plates, comprising 12 volumes, were issued serially in 75 parts in royal quarto format in an edition of 225 numbered copies. The five supplements issued at various times during the long publication period fill a 13th, supplementary, volume; the first three supplements comprising the Check-List of Australian Birds, and the last two the Bibliography of the Birds of Australia.
When the publication was complete it was reviewed in the RAOU journal The Emu by J. A. Leach (as J.A.L.) who wrote:
Mathewsâ approach to nomenclature was controversial and not always consistent. In a review in the AOU journal The Auk, the editor Witmer Stone comments:
As well as the extensive scientific text, in which Mathews described several new species and subspecies, the 12 volumes are illustrated with some 600 hand-coloured lithographed plates by J.G. Keulemans (who completed 163 illustrations for the first four volumes before his death on 29 March 1912), H. Grönvold, Roland Green, Herbert Goodchild and G.E. Lodge. Stone commented on the plates by saying that as artistic productions they could not be compared with the great folios of John Gould, though those by Keulemans were probably the best.
After completing the publication of the 12 volumes, in 1928 Mathews produced The Birds of Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands and the Australian South Polar Quadrant, in the same format and with the same publisher, containing 45 lithographic plates. It was followed in 1936 by A Supplement to the Birds of Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands to which is Added those Birds of New Zealand not figured by Buller, containing 57 plates. Although not technically part of The Birds of Australia, these two volumes extend its coverage to Australia's Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island in the Tasman Sea, and even attempt to fill in the gaps left in Walter BullerâÂÂs coverage of New Zealand in his similarly ambitious A History of the Birds of New Zealand (1872âÂÂ1873, 2nd edition 1887âÂÂ1888).
Publication dates of the various parts are as follows: