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A beautifully illustrated biography of Thomas Bewick (1753-1828), the man whose art helped shape the way we view the natural world
At the end of the eighteenth century, Britain, and much of the Western world, fell in love with nature. Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds marked the moment, the first "field guide" for ordinary people, illustrated with woodcuts of astonishing accuracy and beauty. But his work was far more than a mere guide, for in the vivid vignettes scattered through the book, Bewick captured the vanishing world of rural English life.
In this superb biography, Jenny Uglow tells the story of the farmer's son from Tyneside who influenced book illustration for a century to come. It is a story of violent change, radical politics, lost ways of life, and the beauty of the wild -- a journey to the beginning of our lasting obsession with the natural world.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Britain, and much of the Western world, fell in love with nature. Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds marked the moment, the first "field guide" for ordinary people, illustrated with woodcuts of astonishing accuracy and beauty. But his work was far more than a mere guide, for in the vivid vignettes scattered through the book, Bewick captured the vanishing world of rural English life.
In this superb biography, Jenny Uglow tells the story of the farmer's son from Tyneside who influenced book illustration for a century to come. It is a story of violent change, radical politics, lost ways of life, and the beauty of the wild -- a journey to the beginning of our lasting obsession with the natural world.
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Reviews
"Perhaps future biographies (of requisite quality) celebrating a certain kind of unshowy Georgian figure could be called 'Uglow's Lives' after the woman who has made the genre her own . . . Jenny Uglow has captured her own man with just such skill. This is a lovely book, not just in the quality and sympathy of the writing but in the care of its design and illustration. She has turned a rich but un
Michael Prodger, Sunday Telegraph
"Biographies rarely afford a glimpse behind the office door, and it is the image of Bewick at work that is so valuable here . . . It is hard to imagine a better biographer for this subject than Uglow, with her background in publishing and her knowledge of the North of England and the eighteenth century. It is also hard to imagine a more beautifully and produced book: scores of Bewick's frameless v
Frances Wilson, Times Literary Supplement
"Uglow's biography is as poignant, shapely and incisive as Bewick's woodcuts. Grounded in the countryside he came from, this marvellous book takes its structure from the River Tyne and explores the patterns of its subject's life organically, working outwards from within, tracing the inner play of force and feeling so that the outlines stand out crisply as each tiny detail falls into place."
Hilary Spurling, The Observer