The Missouri River journals of John James Audubon / John James Audubon ; edited and with original commentary by Daniel Patterson.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Historians, biographers, and scholars of John James Audubon and natural history have long been mystified by Audubon's 1843 Missouri River expedition, for his journals of the trip were thought to have been destroyed by his granddaughter Maria Rebecca Audubon. Daniel Patterson is the first scholar to locate and assemble three important fragments of the 1843 Missouri River journals, and here he offers a stunning transcription and critical edition of Audubon's last journey through the American West.

Patterson's new edition of the journals--unknown to Audubon scholars and fans--offers a significantly different understanding of the very core of Audubon's life and work. Readers will be introduced to a more authentic Audubon, one who was concerned about the disappearance of America's wild animal species and yet also loved to hunt and display his prowess in the wilderness. This edition reveals that Audubon's famous late conversion to conservationism on this expedition was, in fact, a literary fiction. Maria Rebecca Audubon created this myth when she rewrote her grandfather's journals for publication to make him into a visionary conservationist. In reality the journals detail almost gratuitous hunting predations throughout the course of Audubon's last expedition.

The Missouri River Journals of John James Audubon is the definitive presentation of America's most famous naturalist on his last expedition and assesses Audubon's actual environmental ethic amid his conflicted relationship with the natural world he so admired and depicted in his iconic works.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

For more than a century, Audubon biographers have navigated a course between praise and condemnation: did he come to advocate conservation and inspire a nation to love and protect birds, or was he primarily a hunter, killing for his scientific work? Patterson (English, Central Michigan Univ.) examines this issue in the context of Audubon's last major trip, his 1843 Missouri River expedition. Patterson discovered journals that chronicle one-third of the expedition's 180 days and were long thought to be lost. In 1897, Maria Rebecca Audubon published an edited version of her grandfather's journals, portraying him as a visionary conservationist--at least late in his life. Patterson argues that she essentially manufactured the man she wanted to present to the public by eliminating some descriptions of his wildlife killing and adding comments he never made about concerns over conservation, in an attempt to make Audubon more presentable to the turn-of-the-century audience increasingly dedicated to wildlife preservation. Audubon's own journal, in combination with the diaries of two traveling companions, comprises nearly half of Patterson's text. In addition to providing a glimpse of the mid-19th-century western frontier, these sections will allow readers to make their own assessments of Audubon as a conservationist. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --David A. Lovejoy, Westfield State University