Obvious typographical errors in the editor's text have been corrected. Inconsistent or incorrect accents, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation in the original documents and quotes were left as printed. On page , "as John as concluded" is a possible printer's error. On page , "I now collecting Letters" is a possible printer's error.
On page , "as never reach d thee" is a possible printer's error. In footnote 23 , "Formon" is the spelling used in the letter printed in this volume. This is the first volume of a two volume work. Linked cross-references to Volume II are designed to work when the book is read on line. Download Vol. The origin of the gifted ornithologist, animal painter, and writer, known to the world as John James Audubon, has remained a mystery up to the present time.
In now lifting the veil which was cast over his early existence, I feel that I serve the cause of historical truth; at the same time it is possible to do fuller justice to all most intimately concerned with the story of his life and accomplishments.
The present work is in reality the outcome of what was first undertaken as a holiday recreation in the summer of While engaged upon a research of quite a different character, I reread, with greater care, Audubon's Ornithological Biography , and after turning the leaves of his extraordinary illustrations, it seemed to me most strange that but little should be known of the making of so original and masterful a character. As I was in England at the time some investigations were undertaken in London, but, as might have been expected, with rather barren results.
After my return to America in the following year the search was continued, but as it proved equally fruitless here, the subject was set aside. Not until , when this investigation was resumed in France, did I meet with success. Every man, however poor or inconsequential he may appear or be, is supposed to possess an estate, and every man of affairs is almost certain to leave behind him domestic, professional, or commercial papers, which are, in some degree, a mark of his attainments and an indication of his character and tastes.
