NEVERMORE: A Book of Hours is a distillation of thirty years of research and meditation by author and poet David Day, an acknowledged authority on the extinction of species. In its conception and approach, NEVERMORE is unlike any other natural history. It is shot through with a combined sense of wonder and savagery in vivid first encounters and last glimpses of each of these now vanished species. Its commentaries are a treasure trove of historic events and insights to be found nowhere else. And, through its elegies, a profoundly human response to this legacy is revealed. In NEVERMORE: A Book of Hours, we see how the fates of animals are linked to human history: Julius Caesar with the Aurochs, Marco Polo with the Elephant Bird, Christopher Columbus with the Eskimo Curlew, John Cabot with the Great Auk, Jacques Cartier with the Passenger Pigeon, Vitus Bering with the Steller Sea Cow, Charles Darwin with the Antarctic Wolf. NEVERMORE: A Book of Hours is a modern bestiary and a book of remembrance. It is beautifully illustrated by four distinguished wildlife artists; and is a tribute and requiem to vanished species. Creatures that are now as much mythical animals as the dragon and the unicorn; and can be found in the only place they may now exist: in the human imagination.

David Day was born and raised in Victoria, B.C. He has lived in Britain, Greece, Spain and currently Toronto. He is poet and author of over forty books of poetry, ecology, history, natural history, fantasy, mythology, and fiction. He has also written for theatre, television, ballet, national and international newspapers and magazines. He has written a dozen books of natural history and ecology, including: The Doomsday Book of Animals (named a Time Magazine ‘Book of the Year’), The Whale War, Eco Wars, and most recently NEVERMORE: A Book of Hours. He has also writetn a book of ecology for children, Noah’s Choice: True Stories of Extinction and Survival. Although best known internationally for his best-selling books on fantasy and mythology, such as A Tolkien Bestiary, Castles, Tolkien’s Ring, The Hobbit Companion and Quest for King Arthur; David Day has also written ten children’s picture books, including: The Sleeper, The Swan Children, The Big Lie, Aska’s Animals, Tippu and The King of the Woods. His books – for both adults and children – have been translated into twenty languages. Eric Beddows is an artist and illustrator working in Stratford, Ontario. He has won numerous awards for his illustrations, including the Governor General's Award for The Rooster's Gift, the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award for the Zoom books, and the International Ezra Jack Keats Award bronze medal. For The Emperor’s Panda, he won the IBBY International Books for Young People Illustrator’s Book of the Year (Canada) Award. Eric is currently writing and illustrating a trilogy of tales of the Northern Gothic to be entitled Thistledown Stories.

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