French-American ornithologist and artist John James Audubon visited Edinburgh several times where his superlative bird paintings were first engraved and the ambition of their publication realised. Audubon met many notable characters such as Sir Walter Scott, naturalist William McGillivray and the controversial doctor Robert Knox, providing a vivid account of early 19th-century life in Edinburgh.

This superbly illustrated look at Audubon’s work is ‘...a lovely book guaranteed to fascinate, delight and inform all who have an interest in painting, natural history, Edinburgh in the later days of the Enlightenment or, above all, birds.’ Scots Magazine.

John Chalmers is a retired orthopaedic surgeon who has associations with the co-publisher of this book, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.