Explore 1,300+ Beautiful Wildlife Illustrations from the 19th Century, Now Restored and Available Online

Today, if you want to know about any of the flo­ra or fau­na that sur­round us, you have only to look it up online. After you get your fill of knowl­edge, you can decide whether or not you want to ven­ture out into the world and see your object of inter­est in its nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment (or a con­trolled sim­u­la­tion there­of). In the Vic­to­ri­an era, things worked a bit dif­fer­ent­ly. Ide­al­ly, you’d have grown up in a house­hold, or at least had access to an insti­tu­tion, with the com­plete set of The Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library, a series of more than 40 vol­umes on every­thing from the birds and the bees to the quadrupeds and the mar­su­pi­alia. Print­ed in a rel­a­tive­ly small for­mat and priced at six shillings each, they brought the intel­lec­tu­al fruits of the nat­u­ral­ist’s enter­prise clos­er to the reach of the every­man than ever before.

While these books offered a good deal of infor­ma­tive text, includ­ing mem­oirs from var­i­ous famous nat­u­ral­ists of the time, their imme­di­ate attrac­tion had more to do with their glo­ri­ous illus­tra­tions, in which col­ored exam­ples of each species popped right out of its black-and-white habi­tat. These more than 1,300 col­or plates, some of the finest that could be seen in any pub­li­ca­tion of sim­i­lar scale in the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, pre­sent­ed an attrac­tive project to the design­er Nicholas Rougeux, whose work we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Hav­ing already restored and cre­at­ed dig­i­tal ver­sions of Euclid­’s Ele­ments, Pierre-Joseph Red­outé’s Les Ros­es and Les Lil­i­acées, Eliz­a­beth Twin­ing’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants, and Daniel Berke­ley Updike’s Print­ing Types, among oth­er books, he’s now put online a com­plete repro­duc­tion of the Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library — with, as usu­al, a blog post about the painstak­ing restora­tion and dig­i­tal re-cre­ation process.

This time, Rougeux has includ­ed a sec­tion about his use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, which actu­al­ly did its part to bring The Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library to his atten­tion in the first place. Not only did AI tools then help him unearth need­ed sources and fill in visu­al gaps, they also came in handy when he was brain­storm­ing cov­er con­cepts for a print­ed ver­sion. Though Rougeux’s restora­tion is pri­mar­i­ly a web site, free to all to explore, you can also buy your own hand­some, large-for­mat phys­i­cal copy of Plates of the Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library for $295.11 USD.

Eas­i­er on the wal­let is the series of posters he’s made with the same illus­tra­tions, each of which presents one of these cat­e­gories of crea­tures great or small at a glance. The orig­i­nal Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library inspired gen­er­a­tions to ded­i­cate them­selves to under­stand­ing the nat­ur­al world; these new ver­sions, whether in print, online, or on the wall, will no doubt encour­age the enthu­si­asm of more than a few bud­ding nat­u­ral­ists in the gen­er­a­tions to come. Vis­it the repro­duc­tion of the Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Lav­ish­ly Illus­trat­ed Cat­a­log of All Hum­ming­bird Species Known in the 19th Cen­tu­ry Gets Restored & Put Online

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra & Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

300,000 Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

Explore an Inter­ac­tive, Online Ver­sion of the Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed, 200-Year-Old British & Exot­ic Min­er­al­o­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.