Abstract
While the focus in readings of Thomas Bewick’s illustrations centre on his masterful skill as a wood engraver and observer of animals and birds, this chapter looks at how his bird habitats—the context in which his ‘portraits’ are situated—are rendered in plates from the History of British Birds. The balance between a static focus on the species-in-question and the dynamic bioregion that supports species life is often compromised in the ‘field guide’ genre. There is an inherent contradiction in the idea that ‘knowing’ birds better means limiting the context in which we ‘know’ them. This is particularly apt considering Bewick’s contemporary popularity in the context of improvements in print technologies and distribution of print materials. The implications for habitat preservation are serious: in order for species to survive, appropriate habitats must also be maintained and protected.
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Notes
- 1.
An online search reveals that Bewick is remembered in the twenty-first century as only an illustrator: images from the History of British Birds typically are not page images but are cropped to show Bewick’s wood engravings and not the accompanying texts.
- 2.
Thomas Bewick, A Memoir of Thomas Bewick, Written by Himself (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862), 153–54.
- 3.
The three quotations are from John Ruskin, Aridane Florentina: Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving (Orpington and Lond: George Allen, 1890, p. 247); Robert Spence Watson, ‘An Address to the Members of the Bewick Club’, 4 Nov. 1885; and John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography, 5 vols. (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1835), 3:304. All are quoted in Peter Quinn, ‘“Their strongest pine”: Thomas Bewick and Regional Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century’ in Bewick Studies: Essays in Celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the Birth of Thomas Bewick, ed. David Gardner-Medwin (Newcastle and London: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 2003), 112, 127, 112.
- 4.
John F. M. Dovaston, ‘Some Account of the Life, Genius, and Personal Habits of the Late Thomas Bewick, the Celebrated Artist and Engraver on Wood. By His Friend John F. M. Dovaston, Esq. A. M., of Westfelton, near Shrewsbury.’ The Magazine of Natural History and Journal of Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology, and Meteorology 3 (1830), 100.
- 5.
Quinn, 130.
- 6.
Ibid., 117–18.
- 7.
Ibid., 115–17.
- 8.
Adrian Searle, ‘Thomas Bewick’s Cheeky Woodcuts,’ The Guardian (15 April 2009), n.p.
- 9.
Bewick, Memoir, 164.
- 10.
Nigel Tattersfield, Thomas Bewick: The Complete Illustrative Work. Vol. 1. 3 vols. (Oak Knoll Press, 2011), 63.
- 11.
Bewick, Memoir, 87, 112–14.
- 12.
Ibid., 7.
- 13.
Ibid., 8.
- 14.
Julia Reinhard Lupton, Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 180.
- 15.
See, for example, Carel P Van Schaik, et al., ‘Orangutan Cultures and the Evolution of Material Culture.’ In The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writing, edited by Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald, 104–10 (Berg, 2007).
- 16.
Thomas Bewick, History of British Birds. Volume 2: Containing the History and Description of Water Birds (Newcastle, 1804), iv. In the ‘Advertisement’ to Vol. 2, Bewick explains that ‘a separation of interests took place between the editors, and the compilation and completion of the present work devolved upon one alone’. His footnote to the advertisement acknowledges the help of the Reverend Henry Cotes ‘for his literary corrections’.
- 17.
The explication of these bioregional principles is rooted in the work of Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann in the 1970s to ‘address matters of a pressing environmental concern through a politics derived from a local sense of place’. Tom Lynch, Cheryll Glotfelty, and Karla Armbruster, eds., The Bioregional Imagination: Literary, Ecology, and Place (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 2.
- 18.
Quinn, 124.
- 19.
John Latham, A General Synopsis of Birds, Vol. 1 (London: Benjamin White, 1781), 461.
- 20.
William Wordsworth, ‘The Two Thieves; or, the Last Stage of Avarice,’ The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. 2, ed. William Knight (London: Macmillan and Co., 1896), 60–61.
- 21.
Bewick, Memoir, 161.
- 22.
Ibid., 162.
- 23.
The trip to Wycliffe was not a complete washout and some of the sketches done there were engraved. For example, Bewick’s engraving of ‘The Sea Eagle (Falco Ossifragus…)’ in Vol. I, p. 11, is labelled Wycliffe, 1791. Ralph Beilby, History of British Birds. The Figures Engraved on Wood by T. Bewick. Volume 2. Containing the History and Description of Land Birds (Newcastle: Beilby and Bewick, 1797).
- 24.
Bewick begins Volume 2 with an Advertisement signed ‘Thomas Bewick’ and dated July 3 1804 to explain ‘that drawings were taken from the stuffed specimens’ in the ‘splendid Museum of the late Marmaduke Tunstall, of Wycliffe, Esq.’ but with a disclaimer that ‘stuffed subjects commonly bear only an imperfect resemblance’ to the ‘dead and living specimens of the birds themselves’ (Bewick, History of British Birds, vol. 2), iii.
- 25.
Jenny Uglow, Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), 297.
- 26.
Beilby, 191.
- 27.
Ibid., 209.
- 28.
Beilby, iv–v.
- 29.
Ibid., iv.
- 30.
Ibid., 210.
- 31.
Ibid. In his ‘Advertisement’ to Volume II, Bewick more formally acknowledges Buffon’s guidance noting that the ‘voluminous folios of the celebrated Count de Buffon, containing one thousand and one … coloured prints of Birds, &c. were kindly lent to aid the work by Michael Bryan, of London, Esq.; these like an index, were constantly at hand, to be referred to and compared with the birds themselves … and were often of great service, by enabling [the editors] to ascertain the names, and to identify each species, in an examination of the subjects before them, when compared with the figures and doubtful nomenclature of other ornithologists’ (Bewick, History, vol. 2, iii–iv). ‘Lesser Pettichaps’ was a dialect term for the chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita).
- 32.
Michael Lynch and John Law, ‘Pictures, Texts, and Objects: The Literary Language Game of Bird-Watching’, in The Science Studies Reader, ed. Mario Biagioli (London: Routledge, 1999), 319–22.
- 33.
Lynda Birke, ‘Exploring the Boundaries: Feminism, Animals, and Science’, in Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations, eds. Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan (Duke University Press, 1995), 44.
- 34.
Bewick, Memoir, 165.
- 35.
Uglow, 300.
- 36.
Bewick, History, 36.
- 37.
Ibid., 36.
- 38.
Ibid., 59.
- 39.
Ibid., 178.
Bibliography
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Bewick, Thomas. History of British Birds: The Figures Engraved on Wood. V2. Containing the History and Description of Water Birds. Newcastle: Printed by E. Walker, for T. Bewick, sold by him, and Longman and Rees, 1804.
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Lynch, Tom, Cheryll Glotfelty, and Karla Armbruster, eds. The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012.
Quinn, Peter. ‘“Their Strongest Pine”: Thomas Bewick and Regional Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century’. In Bewick Studies: Essays in Celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the Birth of Thomas Bewick, edited by David Gardner-Medwin. Newcastle and London: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 2003, 111–30.
Ruskin, John. Aridane Florentina: Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving. Orpington and London: George Allen, 1890.
Searle, Adrian. ‘Thomas Bewick’s Cheeky Woodcuts’. The Guardian, April 15, 2009.
Tattersfield, Nigel. Thomas Bewick: The Complete Illustrative Work. 3 vols. Oak Knoll Press, 2011.
Uglow, Jenny. Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick. London: Faber and Faber, 2006.
Van Schaik, Carel P., Marc Ancrenaz, and Gwendolyn Borgen. ‘Orangutan Cultures and the Evolution of Material Culture’. In The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writing. Edited by Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald. Oxford: Berg, 2007, 104–10.
Watson, Robert Spence. ‘An Address to the Members of the Bewick Club’. November 4, 1885.
Wordsworth, William. ‘The Two Thieves; or, the Last Stage of Avarice’. In The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. Edited by William Knight. London: Macmillan and Co., 1896, 2: 60–61.
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Milne, A. (2020). Placing Birds in Place: Reading Habitat in Beilby’s and Bewick’s History of British Birds. In: Carey, B., Greenfield, S., Milne, A. (eds) Birds in Eighteenth-Century Literature. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32792-7_9
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