My Life

Written in the 1820s and first published in 1862, this memoir by the wood-engraver Thomas Bewick recounts a childhood at Cherryburn on the Tyne, truancy in the woods and river, and apprenticeship to Ralph Beilby in Newcastle. He describes learning to cut on the end-grain of box, the partnership that produced A General History of Quadrupeds and the History of British Birds, and his habits of drawing from live animals. Later chapters turn to religion, politics, and a projected book of British fishes. The book is a craftsman's autobiography, not a catalogue raisonne. It is also a record of late-eighteenth-century Tyneside work and country life.

Bound in quarter brown cloth, pale yellow-green paper boards with a Bewick wood-engraving in brown. Dark blue endleaves. Glassine dust-jacket, no slipcase. The Presentation Volume for 1982, but available for the next 9 years for purchase when it came with a brown slipcase and brown endpapers.