Long before John James Audubon began to chronicle the wildlife of North America in his paintings, Mark Catesby had already undertaken such a project and as a result produced The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. Yet although Catesby’s was the first such published book to depict the flora and fauna of the continent, his name is now far less well known than that of his more publicity-attentive intellectual latter-day colleague.
Fortunately, there has recently been something of a revival of interest in the work of Catesby among historians of natural history that has resulted in a number of very fine exhibitions, conferences, and books addressing his work; the most recent of these being The Curious Mister Catesby: A “Truly Ingenious” Naturalist Explores New Worlds
