Prideaux John Selby was a gifted artist, and the two volumes of Illustrations of British Ornithology are outstandingly beautiful. In many people's estimation, the clarity and crispness of his figures give them a unique perspective that is lacking in many of the pretty lithographs of the nineteenth century. The cool, classic quality of Selby's plates belongs to the age of elegance and could never have been achieved by the Victorians. Selby's bird images were the most accurate delineations of British birds up to that point in time and the most graceful and delicate. After centuries of smaller bird illustrations his new atlas with its life-size figures was ma major accomplishment.
