Scientist of the Day - Richard Bowdler Sharpe
Linda Hall Library
Linda Hall Library
Linda Hall Library
Linda Hall Library
Linda Hall Library
Linda Hall Library
Richard Bowdler Sharpe, an English ornithologist, was born Nov. 22, 1847. Sharpe was a prominent ornithologist in his own right, publishing Monograph of the Kingfishers from 1868 to 1871, and Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise in 1891 and 1898, neither of which we have in our collections. Today, we feature Sharpe as the friend, biographer, and posthumous editor of the bird man John Gould. Sharpe met Gould in 1864; this was many years after the death of Elizabeth Gould, John Gould’s wife and original artist; now Gould was collaborating with the artist William Matthew Hart. After Gould’s death, Sharpe took on the responsibility of completing Gould's unfinished volumes, and he also compiled a very valuable Analytical Index to the Works of the Late John Gould (1893), which not only lists and indexes every single plate Gould ever produced, but begins with a very personal and insightful biography of Gould.
One of the works John Gould never finished was the Birds of New Guinea. This was scheduled to be issued in 25 parts, beginning in 1875, but only 11 fascicles had been published by the time of Gould’s death in early 1881. Sharpe took the reins, working with Hart to complete the remaining plates, and himself writing the text for the birds that Gould had not had time to describe. Sharpe issued the remaining 14 parts, and the work was then published in book form in 1888. We do have this work in our History of Science Collection, and we show above 5 of the birds that Hart lithographed and Sharpe described. They are, in order, the Black-naped Cat Bird, the Lesser Superb Bower Bird, the Purple and Violet Manucode, the New Britain Hawk Owl, and the Orange-crested Bower Bird. We also display the title page, (sixth image). since the four-volume set is usually described as John Gould’s Birds of New Guinea, with no credit going to either Sharpe or Hart.
Apparently Sharpe and Hart worked well together, since Sharpe chose Hart to illustrate his monograph on the Birds of Paradise, which not surprisingly includes many plates from the Birds of New Guinea.
Dr. William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
