Citizen Bird: Scenes from Bird-Life in Plain English for Beginners (1897): A Critical Edition

In the late nineteenth century, American bird lovers faced a crisis. Bird species were becoming endangered or even extinct at an alarming rate, and old methods of hunting and collecting specimens accelerated the process. A new conservationist approach to birding was necessary, and it needed to be taught to the next generation of Americans. Thus 1897’s Citizen Bird, the first birding guide for children, was born. A tremendously influential text in the Progressive-era United States, it inspired in a generation of schoolchildren a love of wild birds and the desire to protect them.

Born of a collaboration between naturalist Mabel Osgood Wright, ornithologist Elliott Coues, and bird artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes, the book is vital to the history of birding and the broader study of nineteenth-century American culture and literature. This new edition of Citizen Bird preserves the original book’s 111 drawings and adds explanatory footnotes, supplemental historical material, and a new introduction. More than a century and a quarter after its original publication, Elizabeth Cherry and Meghan Freeman contextualize the book in the tradition and history of birding and discuss the roles of its authors and illustrator in birding history. A landmark text in the history of American conservationism, Citizen Bird is a timeless classic that will bring joy to birdwatchers of all ages.

Elizabeth Cherry researches and teaches about environmental sociology, culture, animals, and activism at Manhattanville University in Purchase, NY. She is the author of For the Birds: Protecting Wildlife through the Naturalist Gaze (2019, Rutgers University Press) and Culture and Activism: Animal Rights in France and the United States (2016, Routledge).

Meghan Freeman works as a librarian at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in New Haven, CT after a career teaching nineteenth-century literature and culture. She has published research on subjects including the history of museum-going, tourism culture, children’s literature, and the Arts and Crafts movement.

Mabel Osgood Wright (1859-1934) founded the Connecticut Audubon Society and the Birdcraft Museum and Sanctuary in Connecticut, published over a dozen books on birds and birding, and helped revive and reestablish the National Audubon Society through her work as editor and writer for Bird-Lore, the precursor to Audubon Magazine. Her book Birdcraft: A Field Book of Two Hundred Song, Game, and Water Birds (1895) is widely regarded as the first true field guide for birds, and her book Citizen Bird: Scenes from Bird-Life in Plain English for Beginners (1897) is cited by the Library of Congress as a milestone in the conservation movement.