John Gould was one of the most important and productive ornithological illustrators of the 19th century. He was born on 14th September 1804 in Lyme Regis, Dorset and was educated in Guildford. He began to study birds and to learn taxidermy while assisting his father, who was a gardener, in the royal gardens of Windsor. By 1827, John Gould was employed by the Zoological Society as curator of birds and chief taxidermist. In 1829 he married Elizabeth Coxen, who was educated as a governess but who was also an accomplished artist. In 1830 Gould was fortunate enough to obtain possession of a very fine collection of bird skins from the Himalayas and deceided to make the most of the situation and publish an illustrated book of them.

Despite his lack of great artistic skill and his inexperience in species identification and description, he did what he was to do for the rest of his life, he organised other people to use their skills for the production of his own work. His wife Elizabeth adeptly translated Johns intitial, somewhat awkward sketches onto lithographic stones, from which this first work, titled 'A Century of Birds' (1831-1832) was created. He was to achieve immediate sucess as this was the most accurate illustrated work on foreign ornithology published up to that date.

The artist Edward Lear did in fact assist Elizabeth with some of the drawings for this intial work. Edward Lear had already produced his own work on Parrots drawn from London Zoo, in which he used folio sized plates to show the birds life size. Unfortunately this achieved little sucess for him and Gould was to adopt many of Lears original ideas for his own works. In fact Lear became one of the main artists for Goulds works alongside Elizabeth. The other artists and lithographers employed by Gould are Josep Wolf, Henry Constantine Richter and William Hart some of the finest practitioners of natural history art in the 19th century. Goulds next book was called 'The Birds of Europe' which he began to issue in 1832 and finished five years later. Whilst still busy with 'The Birds of Europe' Gould started work on his first monograph of the Toucan family of birds titled 'Monograph of the Ramphastidae' (1834).

Elizabeth's brothers emmigrated to Australia and begun sending Gould some interesting colourful and exotic birds which were previously unknown to him. He began to illustrate them but needing more specimens to produce a work he deceided to travel there himself, accompanied by Elizabeth. While in Australia he collected a huge range of specimens and was sent birds from New Zealand and New Guinea to include in the work. There were thirty six parts to 'Birds of Australia' (1840-48), and six hundred coloured plates.

He was to produce a further 12 works in his lifetime including 'The Mammals of Australia' (1845-60), 'A Monograph of the Trochilidae', or Family of Hummingbirds (1849-61) and a number of reissues of existing work with supplements of new plates.

Gould died in 1881 leaving a number of unfinnished works. His works remain as one the most important series of natural history prints ever produced.