SOURCE: "John James Audubon: Some Remarks on His Writings," in The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. XXI, Nos. 1 & 2, Autumn 1959 & Winter 1960, pp. 1-7.

In the following essay, Fries discusses Audubon's writings, including his letters and journals and the Ornithological Biography.

It was in February of 1957 that I made my first visit to the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections of the Princeton University Library. A short time before I had begun my research on the double-elephant folio of Audubon's The Birds of America, so that the purpose of my visit was to examine the set of the folio belonging to the Library. At one time this folio had belonged to Stephen Van Rensselaer of Albany, New York, one of the original American subscribers to the "B. of A." It was his grandson, Alexander Van Rensselaer of the Class of 1871 at Princeton, who in 1927 presented the set to the...