First Edition, standard edition. Publisher's Brilliante Fawn cloth with inset woodcut op an owl and gilt lettering to the front board, and gilt lettering to the spine, endpapers illustrated with Bewick engavings. Folio, 297 x 215mm. pp. [1-7] 8-286 [2 blank] illustrated throughout with 437 illustrations, Designed and typeset at the Libanus Press. Printed in colour throughout by Hampton Printing (Bristol) Ltd. A book in Fine condition, now housed in a slipcase by Christopher Shaw. For over two hundred years Thomas Bewick's engravings have delighted every generation. His birds, animals and the scenes he saw around him have generated an enthusiasm for his work that has never waned. His influence changed wood engraving and book illustration for over a century. He showed a new way to use an old skill of cutting images in wood. This book is not a biography of the man but an account of how his talent evolved and how his blocks can still perform their magic. It shows the development of Bewick's engraving, beginning with his first learning exercises; some of them have survived and are included, one never published before. Bewick's talent was obvious to those around him, particularly with his engraving of animals and birds he knew well. Towards the end of his apprenticeship he began a commission to illustrate Gay's Fables. He kept a quantity of proofs, many before their final state, and through them the book traces the emergence of his skills as an engraver. This is when he developed his techniques of engraving and lowering, a discovery that his mature work later relied on, and he paid close attention to the texts that he followed with studied realism. The great variety of work he carried out when he became a journeyman is revealed, including a quantity of engraving on silver and other metals, an essential part of both Bewick's training and his mature skill. He did not work only on wood.
