Salim Ali - Writings

Writings

Salim Ali wrote numerous journal articles, chiefly in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. He also wrote a number of popular and academic books, many of which remain in print. Ali credited Tehmina, who had studied in England, for helping improve his English prose. Some of his literary pieces were used in a collection of English writing. A popular article that he wrote in 1930 Stopping by the woods on a Sunday morning was reprinted in The Indian Express on his birthday in 1984. His most popular work was The Book of Indian Birds, written in the style of Whistler's Popular Handbook of Birds, first published in 1941 and subsequently translated into several languages with numerous editions. The first ten editions sold more than forty-six thousand copies. The first edition was reviewed by Ernst Mayr in 1943, who commended it while noting that the illustrations were not to the standard of American bird-books. His magnum opus was however the 10 volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan written with Dillon Ripley and often referred to as "the handbook". This work started in 1964 and ended in 1974 with a second edition completed after his death by others, notably J S Serrao of the BNHS, Bruce Beehler, Michel Desfayes and Pamela Rasmussen. A single volume "compact edition" of the "Handbook" was also produced and a supplementary illustrative work, A Pictorial Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent, by John Henry Dick and Dillon Ripley was published in 1983. The plates from this work were incorporated in the second edition of the "Handbook".

He also produced a number of regional field guides, including "The Birds of Kerala" (the first edition in 1953 was titled "The Birds of Travancore and Cochin"), "The Birds of Sikkim", "The Birds of Kutch" (later "The Birds of Gujarat"), "Indian Hill Birds" and the "Birds of the Eastern Himalayas". Several low-cost book were produced by the National Book Trust including "Common Birds" (1967) written with his niece Laeeq Futehally which was reprinted in several editions with translations into Hindi and other languages. In 1985 he wrote his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow. Ali also wrote about his own vision for the Bombay Natural History Society, noting the importance of conservation related activities. In the 1986 issue of the Journal of the BNHS he noted the role that it had played, the changing interests from hunting to conservation captured in 64 volumes that were preserved in microfiche copies, and the zenith that it had reached under the exceptional editorship of S H Prater.

A two-volume compilation of his shorter letters and writings was published in 2007, edited by Tara Gandhi, one of his last students.