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6 unusual facts about Thomas Bewick


1800 in literature

English "ploughboy poet" Robert Bloomfield's The Farmer's Boy is published with engravings by Thomas Bewick, selling over 25,000 copies in the next two years, with 15 editions by 1827 and a number of translations.

Thomas Bewick

Works using his wood engraving technique, for which he became well known, include the engravings for Oliver Goldsmith's Traveller and The Deserted Village, for Thomas Parnell's Hermit, and for William Somervile's Chase.

This is due both to his skill and to the method, which unlike the wood cut technique of his predecessors, carves against the grain, in hard box wood, using fine tools normally favoured by metal engravers.

Bewick was fond of the music of Northumberland, and of the Northumbrian smallpipes in particular.

One of these pupils was Thomas's son, Robert, whose surviving manuscript tunebooks give a picture of a piper's repertoire in the 1820s.

Tyne and Wear Archives Service

Thomas Bewick,(11 August 1753 – 8 November 1828) English engraver and natural history author.


Mickley

Thomas Bewick, wood engraver and author of A History of British Birds, the first practical field guide, was born in the village at Cherryburn House, now a National Trust site.


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