With tables of varieties. Second edition.
Windermere & London, J. Garnett & Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1878
By an important wood-engraver. Second edition and a lovely, fresh copy of this important work by the wood-engraver, poet, and free thinker William James Linton (1812-1897).
Wood engraving 'was the craft which, more than any other nineteenth-century printmaking technique, pushed forward the illustration of books, periodicals, newspapers, and ephemeral publications, and transformed visual awareness in all advanced societies. Wood-engraving was the first of the major printmaking media to exploit photography, and it was partly as a reaction against the effects of lithography and photo-mechanical printing that the so-called original printmaking media of etching and engraving were re-invented in the second half of the nineteenth century as a major vehicle of artistic expression. Linton's career spans these developments, in craft terms linking Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) to Walter Crane (1845)–1915—Crane being Linton's apprentice from 1858 to 1862—and linking the world of art to that of the Illustrated London News and the pictorial advertisement boom of the last quarter of the century. In his own practice Linton increasingly found the personal independence and control over the means of production associated with the ideology of the arts and crafts movement by operating his own small private press.
No one was more aware than Linton of the large professional and social issues involved in these developments. He wrote extensively on the technical aspects of his craft (Specimens of a New Process of Engraving for Surface Printing, 1861), on the inherent tension between the artistic and the artisanal aspects of printmaking ('Art in engraving on wood', Atlantic Monthly, 43, June 1879), on the history of the craft in Britain and America (History of Wood Engraving in America, 1882; Masters of Wood Engraving, 1889), and on his own life (Three Score and Ten Years?, New York, 1894; published in London as Memories, 1895). As a reproductive engraver he participated in many of the most important publishing projects of the epoch, including Moxon's edition of Tennyson and George Eliot's Romola, on which he and his brother worked after designs by Frederic Leighton. Beyond his vast output of relatively ephemeral material, Linton's most important works are the botanical studies for his own Ferns of the Lake District (1864), and the views and other subjects for Eliza Lynn Linton's The Lake Country (1864) and for Harriet Martineau's The English Lakes (1858). A considerable group of his flower drawings, probably intended for another botanical work on the Lake District, was presented by Kineton Parkes to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1938. They are of beautiful quality' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).
Second edition; 8vo; frontispiece and illustrations throughout the text, lacking the front free endpaper, occasional small spots to contents; original green cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt, cloth fresh save for light rubbing at the extremities, excellent condition; 179pp.
Wood engraving 'was the craft which, more than any other nineteenth-century printmaking technique, pushed forward the illustration of books, periodicals, newspapers, and ephemeral publications, and transformed visual awareness in all advanced societies. Wood-engraving was the first of the major printmaking media to exploit photography, and it was partly as a reaction against the effects of lithography and photo-mechanical printing that the so-called original printmaking media of etching and engraving were re-invented in the second half of the nineteenth century as a major vehicle of artistic expression. Linton's career spans these developments, in craft terms linking Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) to Walter Crane (1845)–1915—Crane being Linton's apprentice from 1858 to 1862—and linking the world of art to that of the Illustrated London News and the pictorial advertisement boom of the last quarter of the century. In his own practice Linton increasingly found the personal independence and control over the means of production associated with the ideology of the arts and crafts movement by operating his own small private press.
No one was more aware than Linton of the large professional and social issues involved in these developments. He wrote extensively on the technical aspects of his craft (Specimens of a New Process of Engraving for Surface Printing, 1861), on the inherent tension between the artistic and the artisanal aspects of printmaking ('Art in engraving on wood', Atlantic Monthly, 43, June 1879), on the history of the craft in Britain and America (History of Wood Engraving in America, 1882; Masters of Wood Engraving, 1889), and on his own life (Three Score and Ten Years?, New York, 1894; published in London as Memories, 1895). As a reproductive engraver he participated in many of the most important publishing projects of the epoch, including Moxon's edition of Tennyson and George Eliot's Romola, on which he and his brother worked after designs by Frederic Leighton. Beyond his vast output of relatively ephemeral material, Linton's most important works are the botanical studies for his own Ferns of the Lake District (1864), and the views and other subjects for Eliza Lynn Linton's The Lake Country (1864) and for Harriet Martineau's The English Lakes (1858). A considerable group of his flower drawings, probably intended for another botanical work on the Lake District, was presented by Kineton Parkes to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1938. They are of beautiful quality' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).
Second edition; 8vo; frontispiece and illustrations throughout the text, lacking the front free endpaper, occasional small spots to contents; original green cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt, cloth fresh save for light rubbing at the extremities, excellent condition; 179pp.
About us
Shapero Rare Books is an internationally renowned dealer in antiquarian & rare books and works on paper.
Our Bookshop and Gallery can be found in the heart of Mayfair at 106 New Bond Street, where most of our stock is available to view and on public display.
We exhibit at major international art fairs, including TEFAF (Maastricht and New York), Frieze Masters, Art Miami and Masterpiece London, as well as antiquarian & rare book fairs including New York, Paris, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Hong Kong.
