Joseph Wolf was one of the preeminent natural history artists active in the nineteenth century. Born in Germany, he travelled to London in 1848 where he began a career illustrating natural history books including the ‘bird books’ of John Gould and David Livingstone’s accounts of his travels in Africa. His illustrations were praised for their accuracy and ability to capture lifelike portrayals of the animals they depicted.

This book, The Life and Habits of Wild Animals was published according to its preface as the “last series of illustrations which will be drawn by Mr Wolf upon wood or upon stone”. It contains a series of illustrations depicting a range of animals in their natural habitats with an accompanying letterpress, written in a typical florid Victorian manner, by the American zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot.