Life on Earth: A Natural History (Inscribed by Author)

ATTENBOROUGH, David. Life on Earth: A Natural History. London: Collins/BBC, 1979.

Large Octavo. Illustrated boards. Unclipped pictorial dust jacket. 319 pp., profusely illustrated throughout in colour. 319pp. Eleventh printing. Inscribed by the author on the half-title: "For Kara Feldman, with best wishes."

When the BBC broadcast Life on Earth in 1979, it was the most ambitious natural history documentary series ever made — thirteen episodes filmed across thirty countries over three years, presenting the entire history of life on the planet as a single connected narrative. David Attenborough had conceived and written the series himself, and his physical presence in the frame — crouching beside a mountain gorilla in Rwanda, standing in a Jurassic limestone bed, walking through a coral reef — established the mode of natural history broadcasting that would define the genre for the next half century. The companion volume, published simultaneously by Collins and the BBC, brought the full scope of the series to the page with the same authority and the same ambition. It remains the work that introduced Attenborough to the widest possible audience and that confirmed the natural world as a subject capable of commanding the full resources of serious television.

Very good in unclipped dust jacket. Mild toning to jacket outer faces. A scattering of foxing to preliminaries. Some small markings to upper and fore-edges.

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Catalogue Number: HH000596