Waldemar H. Fries (1889- ).
The Double Elephant Folio: The Story of Audubon's Birds of America. Chicago: American Library Association, 1973 [i.e. 1974].
Fries embarked on a fifteen-year quest to determine the fate of all documented copies of Audubon's magnum opus, Birds of America, that ultimately ended in his locating 134 complete copies and 28 that had been broken as of 1973. (The whereabouts and status of several of these have changed as of this writing.) His census traces the two hundred copies thought to be produced at the time of publication as they changed hands over the ensuing 150 years. Fries personally examined 128 complete sets.