A new world record has been set with this sale; it’s the highest price ever paid for a printed book.
The book comprises of 1,000 bird illustrations and around 500 breeds of birds.
It is a very large book with fold out pages showing birds painted life size. The date of publication is between 1827 and 1838, the book took John James Audubon 12 years to complete.
It is thought around 119 copies still survive today many of these in private collections.
The auction was held at Sotheby’s along with 50 other lots from a literary collection of Frederick Fermor-Hesketh.
The winning bid came from a renowned book dealer from London named Michael Tollemache.
Another copy of this book was sold 10 years ago and fetched £5.7 million.
The author Audubon was born in Haiti in 1785; he grew up in France and then in 1803 he moved to Kentucky USA.
