A History of British Birds (First Folio Society Edition)

BEWICK, Thomas (intro. Jenny Uglow). A History of British Birds. London: The Folio Society, 2010. 2 vols.

Octavo. Vol. I: History and Description of Land Birds; Vol. II: History and Description of Water Birds. Both volumes quarter bound in blue leather with raised spine bands, gilt spine titles, and marbled paper boards. Upper edges sprayed blue. Blue illustrated slipcase with gilt titling. Vol. I: xxii, 382 pp; Vol. II: xxviii, 432 pp. Over 500 original wood engravings by Thomas Bewick throughout both volumes, including full-page bird portraits and decorative vignettes. Introduction by Jenny Uglow. A facsimile of the definitive 1826 edition with minor emendations. First Folio Society edition.

Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) was born in Ovingham, Northumberland, and spent his career in Newcastle as a wood engraver whose influence on the art of book illustration was profound and lasting. He had learned engraving as an apprentice and developed, through decades of practice, a technique of working on the end grain of boxwood that allowed for a fineness of line and a subtlety of tone unprecedented in the medium. His subjects — birds, animals, rural scenes, the human figures that populated his tail-piece vignettes — were drawn from the countryside around Newcastle with an attentiveness and accuracy that gave his work scientific as well as artistic value.

The first volume of A History of British Birds, covering Land Birds, appeared in 1797 and was co-written with Bewick's business partner Ralph Beilby, though the engravings were entirely Bewick's own. By the time the second volume — Water Birds — appeared in 1804, the partnership had dissolved and both text and engravings were Bewick's work alone. The book went through multiple revised editions in Bewick's lifetime; the definitive 1826 edition, on which this Folio Society reprint is based, represents the most thoroughly corrected form of the work. The history of modern ornithological illustration effectively begins with these volumes: before Bewick, natural history illustration was largely a matter of specimen portraits on plain backgrounds; Bewick placed his birds in their habitats, animated them with characterful observation, and surrounded them with the rural world they actually inhabited. The vignettes that fill the spaces at the end of sections — tiny scenes of country life, often comic, occasionally melancholy, always precisely observed — are as celebrated as the bird engravings themselves.

The introduction to this Folio Society edition was written by Jenny Uglow, whose biography Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick (2006) is the authoritative modern account of his life and work.

Near fine. Slipcase shows nominal shelf wear. Some very mild spotting to fore-edges of both volumes; otherwise fine throughout.

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Catalogue Number: HH000575