Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick - Softcover

Uglow, Jenny

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571223753 ISBN 13: 9780571223756

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2007

Synopsis

Thomas Bewick wrote A History of British Birds at the end of the eighteenth century, just as Britain fell in love with nature. This was one of the wildlife books that marked the moment, the first 'field-guide' for ordinary people, illustrated by woodcuts of astonishing accuracy and beauty. But it was far more than that, for in the vivid vignettes scattered through the book Bewick drew the life of the country people of the North East - a world already vanishing under the threat of enclosures.

In Nature's Engraver: The life of Thomas Bewick, Jenny Uglow tells the story of the farmer's son from Tyneside who revolutionised wood-engraving and 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.

Nature's Engraver won the National Arts Writers Award in 2007. Jenny Uglow is the author of, among others, A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration, which was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize, Lunar Men and In These Times.

'The most perfect historian imaginable' Peter Ackroyd

About this title

Review:

'A superb biography, written with as much sensitivity and attention to detail as one of Bewick's woodcuts.' -- Guardian

'A wise and perceptive portrait of the bluff northcountryman ... [It] is also a beautiful book.' -- Irish Times

'An impeccable, lovingly written biography.' -- Sunday Telegraph

'An object lesson in how to turn an unshowy life into a gripping narrative.' -- First Post

'Bewick emerges from her pages as a rare artist whose work ... has an originality that transcends the time and place in which it was created.' -- Sunday Times

'Brings us the closest yet to the "rough strong strokes of Bewick's elderly hands"'. -- Observer

'Delightful ... Bewick always meant for his work to be accessible: 250 years after his birth, it still is.' -- Evening Standard

'Fascinating ... filled with examples of his witty, "stubbornly down to earth" engravings.' -- Daily Mail

'Uglow's delightful biography is stuffed with examples [of his carvings] ... even 250 years after Bewick's birth his work remains accessible.' -- Scotsman

Book Description:

Winner of the National Arts Writers Award, Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick is Jenny Uglow's beautifully illustrated biography of Thomas Bewick, the man whose wildlife illustrations shaped the way we view the natural world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0571223753
• ISBN 13: 9780571223756
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496