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Bloomsbury to publish £600 opus on African mammals

17.09.12 | Joshua Farrington

Bloomsbury is to publish the most ambitious inventory of Africa's mammals ever produced.

The six-volume reference work Mammals of Africa (February, £600) is the brainchild of scientist Jonathan Kingdon of the Wildlife Conservation Unit at Oxford University. Kingdon is also an artist specialising in drawing from life, and the set will be illustrated almost entirely with his own work.

Nigel Redman, head of natural history for Bloomsbury Publishing, said Kingdon, now in his 70s and with nearly 20 books behind him, was "an extraordinary person, driven and erudite" and dreamed up the idea about 15 years ago as the outcome of a lifetime's work on Africa's mammals.

Working alongside other series editors David Happold, Thomas Hutynski, Michael Hoffman, Meredith Happold and Jan Kalina, Kingdon has edited the work of 356 individual contributors producing species profiles, with 6,600 colour paintings and more than 2,000 line drawings included in the work.

• Africa
• Bloomsbury
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• Jonathan Kingdon
• Joshua Farrington
• Mammals of Africa
• Nigel Redman