The Complete Illustrative Work of Thomas Bewick (review)

Nigel Tattersfield is known, quite rightly, as the leading scholar in Bewick studies, having already published Bookplates by Beilby and Bewick (1999) and John Bewick — Engraver on Wood 1760–1795 (2001). Now we have before us this crowning achievement of many years of painstaking and meticulous research, in three handsome volumes.

It is true to say that books illustrated by Bewick and members of his extensive work shop were much collected in his own lifetime — he himself had little time for such mania, scornfully labelling these energetic collectors as ‘poor bibliomanists’ and ‘book mad gentry’. Yet, until the appearance of this work, the Bewick enthusiast had been less than well served by previous attempts to chart a logical path through a bibliographical jungle strewn with deep chasms and directions leading to cul-de-sacs.

In 1866 and 1868 the Revd Thomas Hugo published his two volume Bewick Collector which, was based, fundamentally, on years of assiduous collecting and, as such, is merely a record (extremely well-judged in many instances it must be said) of the items he was able to amass. It was not until 1953 that Sydney Roscoe, a bibliographer rather than a collector, produced his Bibliography Raisonné, an infinitely more professional and scholarly work than Hugo’s. This though was somewhat limited in its scope, concentrating as it does on Thomas Bewick’s three main works — the Quadrupeds, British Birds, and Fables of Aesop. Both Hugo and Roscoe were hamstrung by not having access to the Beilby-Bewick series of workshop archives. Until comparatively recently this collection, comprising some 120 manuscript books of account, themselves containing large and hitherto unexplored manuscript material, was in private hands. Today it is held in the Tyne and Wear Archives and the author has made splendid and full use of its rich seams of information.

In addition he has delved deeply into the extensive collection of graphic works, chiefly proofs of book illustrations given by Thomas’s daughter Isabella to the Depart ment of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum in 1883. Most of these proofs lacked any form of annotation, but Tattersfield has, by careful sifting, managed to identify the publications to which these proofs correctly belong. It has been a lengthy and back-breaking process, but the admirers of Bewick will remain perennially indebted to the author for his determination to sort out the chaos. In addition a collection of letters to and from Bewick, in the collection of Ian Bain or transcribed by him, have provided further invaluable information for this venture.

Volume 1 deals with the Workshop, concentrating on the careers of Ralph Beilby, Thomas Bewick, and John Bewick and their relationships both between themselves, the chief protagonists, and the numerous apprentices they employed. One can appreciate, perhaps for the first time so clearly, the sheer hard work and application that was needed for works such as the Quadrupeds and the Birds to reach the public. We read that each volume took Bewick seven years to prepare. Yet, by the time the second volume of the British Birds reached the press, it really marked the end of Bewick’s career as an artist-engraver. Nevertheless, he continued to update this supreme achievement over many years. Bewick found appreciation early on for his efforts — Wordsworth penned the following lines in 1805 in his Lyrical Ballads

Oh, now that the boxwood and the graver were mine, Of the poet who lives on the banks of the Tyne [. . .]

Not perhaps, the poet’s most plangent verse but the sentiment is honest, nonetheless.

Bewick’s moral and improving nature is a theme apparent in most of his books and nowhere more so than in the Fables of Aesop of 1818. This appeared to a muted public response and indeed, following his serious illness in 1812–14, only one...