‘Exceptional’: rare book of illustrations from Darwin’s ‘bird man’ on sale for £2m

The full set of folios published by John Gould will be presented at Firsts book fair in London in mid-May

John Gould was one of the most sought-after taxidermists in 19th-century London, commissioned by King George IV to stuff the first giraffe to arrive in England.

But Gould’s lasting legacy is birds. He travelled the world documenting and cataloguing as many avian species as he could find, many of them never seen before, earning him the nickname the Bird Man and the appointment as official “bird stuffer” to the Zoological Society.