A History of British Birds
Birds | |
Genre | Natural history |
---|---|
Published | 1797Longman) | –1804 (Bewick,
A History of British Birds is a
British Birds has been compared to works of poetry and literature. It plays a recurring role in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. William Wordsworth praised Bewick in the first lines of his poem "The Two Thieves": "Oh now that the genius of Bewick were mine, And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne."
The book was effectively the first "field guide" for non-specialists. Bewick provides an accurate illustration of each species, from life if possible, or from skins. The common and scientific name(s) are listed, citing the naming authorities. The bird is described, with its distribution and behaviour, often with extensive quotations from printed sources or correspondents. Those who provided skins or information are acknowledged. The species are grouped into families such as "Of the Falcon", using the limited and conflicting scientific sources of the time. The families of land birds are further grouped into birds of prey, omnivorous birds, insectivorous birds, and granivorous birds, while the families of water birds are simply listed, with related families side by side.
Each species entry begins on a new page; any spaces at the ends of entries are filled with tail-pieces, small, often humorous woodcuts of country life. British Birds remains in print, and has attracted the attention of authors such as
Background
Early scientific works on birds, such as those of
The first modern ornithology, intended to describe all the then-known birds worldwide,
George Edwards was a leading British naturalist and illustrator in the 17th century. He was the librarian to the Royal College of Physicians with access to their collection of 8,000 books, and he used these, together with stuffed and live animals, to produce illustrated publications. His four-volume A Natural History of Uncommon Birds (1743–1751) and its three supplements covered more than 600 natural history topics, and his publications enabled Linnaeus to name 350 bird species, including many type specimens.[15] When he was researching published sources for his bird project, Bewick relied particularly on Edwards' book and the multi-volume Histoire Naturelle of the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.[16]
Thomas Bewick
Thomas Bewick was born at Cherryburn,[17] a house in the parish of Mickley, Northumberland,[18] and he was apprenticed at the age of 14 to Ralph Beilby, an engraver in Newcastle upon Tyne, and learnt how to engrave on wood and metal.[18][19]
The business prospered,[20] becoming Newcastle's leading engraving service with an enviable reputation for high-quality work and good service.[21] Now partners, Bielby and Bewick published their History of Quadrupeds in 1790,[22] and its success encouraged them to consider producing a new book on British birds.[18][23] In preparation for this major work, Bewick spent several years engraving the necessary wood blocks.[24]
Bewick became well known for his engravings, including the woodcuts for Oliver Goldsmith's Traveller and The Deserted Village, for Thomas Parnell's Hermit, and for William Somervile's Chase.[18] Perhaps the best known of his prints is The Chillingham Bull, executed on an exceptionally large woodblock for Marmaduke Tunstall, a Yorkshire landowner.[22] Bewick also produced and illustrated several editions of Aesop's Fables throughout his creative life.[25][26][27] His success meant that Bewick had at least 30 pupils who worked for him and Beilby as apprentices, the first of whom was his younger brother John.[24]
Bewick died at his home on 8 November 1828. He was buried in Ovingham churchyard, beside his late wife Isabella, who had died two years earlier on 1 February 1826, and not far from his parents and his brother John.[28][29]
Approach
The preface to A History of British Birds states that "while one of the editors [Bewick] of this work was engaged in preparing the cuts, which are faithfully drawn from Nature, and
Each species of bird is presented in a few pages (generally between two and four; occasionally, as with the
The text begins by stating the size of the bird. Bewick then describes the bird, typically in one paragraph, naming any notable features such as the colour of the eyes ("irides"), the bill, the legs, and plumage on each part of the body. Next, the origin and distribution of the species are discussed, with notes or quotations from authorities such as John Ray, Gilbert White and Buffon.
Bewick then mentions any other facts of interest about the bird; in the case of the musk duck, this concerns its "musky smell, which arises from the liquor secreted in the glands on the rump". If the bird hybridizes with other species, this is described, along with whether the hybrids are fertile ("productive").
Finally, Bewick acknowledges anyone who had helped him. The musk duck is stated to have been drawn from a "living specimen" which was however "excepting the head, entirely white", unlike the "general appearance" shown in the woodcut; the bird "was lent to this work by William Losh, Esq., of Point Pleasant, near Newcastle". Losh, one of Bewick's many collaborators, was a wealthy partner in Losh, Wilson and Bell, manufacturers of chemicals and iron.[36] Many of the birds, especially the rarer species, were necessarily illustrated from skins rather than from life. For example, for the Sabine's snipe, "The author was favoured by N. A. Vigors, Esq., [who had described the supposed species] with a preserved specimen, from which the above figure is taken."[b] In A Memoir (posthumously published in 1862), Bewick states that he intended to "stick to nature as closely as I could", but admits that he had "in several cases" to rely on the stuffed "preserved skins" of his neighbour Richard Routledge Wingate.[39][40]
The grouping of species gave Bewick difficulty,
Each account is closed with a miniature woodcut known from its position in the text as a tail-piece.
Outline
Land birds
The first volume "containing the History and Description of Land Birds" begins with a preface, an introduction, and a list of technical terms illustrated with Bewick's woodcuts. The introduction begins:
In no part of the animal creation are the wisdom, the goodness, and the bounty of Providence displayed in a more lively manner than in the structure, formation, and various endowments of the feathered tribes.
The birds are divided into
To the practical ornithologist there arises a considerable gratification in being able to ascertain the distinguishing characters of birds as they appear at a distance, whether at rest, or during their flight; for not only every genus has something peculiar to itself, but each species has its own appropriate marks, by which a judicious observer may discriminate almost with certainty.[45]
Bewick also mentions conservation, in the context of the probable local extinction of a valuable resource:
"Both this and the Great Bustard are excellent eating, and would well repay the trouble of domestication; indeed, it seems surprising, that we should suffer these fine birds to be in danger of total extinction,[d] although, if properly cultivated, they might afford as excellent a repast as our own domestic poultry, or even as the Turkey, for which we are indebted to distant countries.[47]"
The 1847 edition, revised with additional woodcuts and descriptions, is organized as follows, with the species grouped into families such as the shrikes:
- Birds of Prey
- Of the Falcon [includes buzzard, sparrowhawk]
- Of the Owl
- Omnivorous Birds
- Insectivorous Birds
- Of the Shrike
- Of the Flycatchers
- Of the Warblers
- Of the Wagtail
- Granivorous Birds
- Of the Lark
- Of the Titmouse
- Of the Bunting
- Of the Finch
- Of the Woodpecker
- Of the Swallow
- Of the Gallinaceous kind [gamebirds]
- Of the Grouse
- Of the Bustard
Water birds
The second volume "containing the History and Description of Water Birds" begins with its own preface, and its own introduction. Bewick discusses the question of where many seabirds go to breed, revisits the subject of migration, and concludes with reflections on "an all-wise Providence" as shown in Nature.
The 1847 edition is organized as follows:[e]
- Of the Oyster Catcher
- Of the Plover
- Of the Heron
- Of the Avoset [one species]
- Of the Spoonbill [one species]
- Of the Ibis [one species]
- Of the Curlew
- Of the Sandpiper
- Of the Godwit
- Of the Snipe
- Of the Rail
- Of the Gallinule
- Of the Coot
- Of the Phalarope
- Of the Grebes
- Of the Terns
- Of the Gull
- Of the Predatory Gulls [the skuas]
- Of the Petrel
- Of the Anas [ducks, geese and swans]
- Of the Mergus[sawbill ducks]
- Of the Cormorant
- Of the Gannet [one species]
- Of the Divers
- Of the Guillemot
- Of the Auk
- Foreign Birds
The 'foreign birds' are not grouped but just listed directly as species, from Bearded Vulture to Mino. Fifteen birds are included, with no description, and despite their placement in the table of contents, they appear at the front of the volume as an 'Appendix'.
Reception
Bewick's Birds was an immediate best-seller. When Land Birds appeared, the whole print sold out by the middle of 1798; 1000 copies of the demy size (8¾ x 5⅝ in, 221 x 142 mm), 850 of the royal octavo (10 x 6¼ in, 253 x 158 mm), and 24 of the grand imperial (22 x 30 in, 559 x 762 mm).[48]
Contemporary
In 1805, the British Critic wrote that it was "superfluous to expatiate much on the merits of a work" that everyone liked because of "the aptness of its descriptions, the accuracy of its figures, the spirit of its wood engravings, and the ingenious variety of its vignettes."[49]
The 1829 Magazine of Natural History commented that "
Ibis, reviewing the Memoir of Thomas Bewick, written by himself in 1862, compares the effect of Bewick and Gilbert White, writing "It was the pages of Gilbert White and the woodcuts of Bewick which first beguiled the English schoolboy to the observation of our feathered friends", and "how few of our living naturalists but must gratefully acknowledge their early debt to White's 'History' and to the life-like woodcuts of Bewick!" The reviewer judges that "Probably we shall not wrong the cultivated annalist of Selborne by giving the first place to Bewick." However, comparing them as people, "Bewick has not the slightest claim to rank with Gilbert White as a naturalist. White was what Bewick never was, a man of science; but, if no naturalist, Bewick was a lover of nature, a careful observer, and a faithful copier of her ever-varying forms. In this, and in this alone, lies his charm."[51]
The
Modern
John Brewer, writing in the London Review of Books, says that for his Birds, "Bewick had acquired national renown as the artist who most truthfully depicted the flora and fauna of the British countryside." He adds that "Bewick's achievement was both technical and aesthetic." In his view, Bewick "reconciled nature, science and art. His engravings of British birds, which represent his work at its finest, are almost all rendered with the precision of the ornithologist: but they also portray the animals in their natural habitat – the grouse shelters in his covert, the green woodpecker perches on a gnarled branch, waders strut by streams ..." He observes that "Most of the best engravings include a figure, incident or building which draws the viewer's eye beyond and behind the animal profile in the foreground. Thus the ploughboy in the distant field pulls our gaze past the yellow wagtail ..."[53]
The
Dissenting from the general tone of praise for Bewick,
The
The
Jenny Uglow, writing in The Guardian, notes that "An added delight was the way he filled the blank spaces with 'tail-pieces', tiny, witty, vivid scenes of ordinary life." She describes the importance of Birds in Jane Eyre, and ends "He worked with precision and insight, in a way that we associate with poets such as Clare and Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Elizabeth Bishop. To Bewick, nature was the source of joy, challenge and perpetual consolation. In his woodcuts of birds and animals as well as his brilliant tail-pieces, we can still feel this today."[42] However, in her biography of Bewick, she adds that "The country might be beautiful but it also stank: in his vignettes men relieve themselves in hedges and ruins, a woman holds her nose as she walks between the cowpats, and a farmyard privy shows that men are as filthy as the pigs they despise."[57]
Hilary Spurling, reviewing Uglow's biography of Bewick in The Observer, writes that when Birds appeared, people all over Britain "became his pupils". Spurling cites Charles Kingsley's story of his father's hunting friends from the New Forest mocking him for buying "a book 'about dicky-birds", until, astonished, they saw the book and discovered "things they had known all their lives and never even noticed".[58]
In culture
The History is repeatedly mentioned in
I returned to my book--Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of 'the solitary rocks and promontories' by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the
North Cape--[61]
In M. R. James' short story, Casting the Runes, a Bewick print is also referenced, described as "a moonlit road and a man walking along it, followed by an awful demon creature."[62]
The English
Oh now that the genius of Bewick were mine
And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne.
Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,
For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.[63]
Legacy
Bewick's reputation as a wood engraver was at its height in the nineteenth century, with the critic John Ruskin writing that the way Bewick had engraved the feathers of his birds was "the most masterly thing ever done in woodcutting".[65]
The advent of mechanical printing techniques from the 1860s led to something of a decline in his importance,
Bewick had met the American naturalist and bird painter John James Audubon in 1827, and had given him a copy of his Quadrupeds for his children.[67] The American returned the compliment by naming a newly-discovered US bird species as Bewick's wren in honour of his friend.[68]
The way in which Bewick had organised the text and illustrations in his Birds takes the form of, and sets a precedent for, modern field guides.[33][69] Indeed, the French naturalist François Holandre (1753–1830) assembled a field guide using Bewick's woodcuts as early as 1800.[70]
Tail-pieces
A selection of tail-pieces from the book, where they have no captions.
-
Children in runaway cart
-
Women collecting shellfish
-
Hunter precariously retrieving duck from river
-
Old woman with ducks
-
Toy boats in river
-
Hunter in the snow[g]
-
That pisseth against a wall
-
Pegleg andpeacock
Principal editions
Volume 1 first appeared in 1797, and was reprinted several times in 1797, then again in 1798 and 1800. Volume 1 was priced 13s. in boards. Volume 2 first appeared in 1804 (price 11. 4s. in boards). The first imprint was "Newcastle : Printed by Sol. Hodgson, for Beilby & Bewick; London: Sold by them, and G.C. and J. Robinson, 1797–1804." The book was reprinted in 1805, 1809, 1816, and 1817.[73]
In 1821 a new edition appeared with supplements to both volumes and additional figures, with the imprint "Printed by Edward Walker, Pilgrim-Street, for T. Bewick: sold by him, and E. Charnley, Newcastle; and Longman and co., London, 1821." The book was reprinted in many subsequent versions with a 6th edition in 1826, another in 1832, an 8th edition in 1847, and a royal octavo 'Memorial Edition' in 1885.[73]
- A History of British Birds. First Edition.
- --- Bewick, Thomas; Beilby, Ralph (1797). Volume 1, Land Birds.
- --- Bewick, Thomas (1804). Volume 2, Water Birds.
Selected modern versions
- Bewick's British Birds (2010), Arcturus. (hardback) ISBN 978-1-84837-647-2
- Bewick, Thomas; Aesop; Bewick, Jane (2012). Memorial Edition Of Thomas Bewick's Works: A History Of British Birds. (reproduced in original format) Ulan Press.
Notes
- ^ Bewick had a "strained" relationship with Beilby, who was first his tutor, then from 1777 his business partner. They produced A General History of Quadrupeds together in 1790, but after Land Birds in 1797 and "a period of dissatisfaction" they separated.[31]
- ^ The "Sabine's snipe" species described by Vigors was treated as a common snipe by Barrett-Hamilton in 1895[37] and by Meinertzhagen in 1926, but was thought to be probably a Wilson's snipe in 1945. The skin that Bewick worked from was presumably Vigors' type specimen; it was much darker than a typical common snipe.[38]
- ^ Bewick made dozens of woodcuts for coal certificates for collieries near Newcastle, in what is now Tyne and Wear. These depict buildings such as the Custom House with its smoking chimneys,[44] and one woodcut is boldly headed 'NEWCASTLE'.[31]
- ^ Bewick's prediction was correct. The great bustard became extinct in Britain in the 1830s.[46]
- ^ Some of the species in the book appear without any section heading.
- ^ This passage from Jane Eyre is quoting from Bewick's Introduction to Volume 2, Water Birds, which in turn is quoting a poem by James Thomson.
- ^ Jenny Uglow states that the boy is Bewick himself; the hunter Joe Liddell has wrapped the stock of his gun to keep the lock from freezing.[71]
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- ^ Birkhead 2018, p. 239
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- ^ Uglow 2006, p. 197
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- ^ a b Dixon 2010, p. 264
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- ^ Bewick, Thomas (1818). Select Fables of Aesop. Aesopica. pp. Fables 1–141.
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- ^ "Low Fell – Additional Pages". Low Fell History: Part 1. Gateshead Libraries. 2011. Archived from the original on 8 January 2014. Retrieved 21 March 2012.
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- ^ a b c Uglow, Jenny (14 October 2006). "The Guardian". Small wonders. Retrieved 12 January 2013.
- ^ a b "Thomas Bewick 1753–1828". Tate Gallery. Retrieved 12 January 2013.
- ^ "The Bewick Collection (Pease Bequest): Coal certificates - Tyne". Newcastle Collection. Archived from the original on 11 June 2011. Retrieved 21 January 2013.
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- ^ Cooper, Joanne (2013). "Otis tarda (great bustard)". Natural History Museum. Retrieved 21 January 2013.
- ^ Bewick, volume 1, Land Birds, 2nd edition, 1847. "Little Bustard".
- ^ Uglow 2006, p. 263
- ^ Anon (1805). "A History of British Birds by Thomas Bewick". British Critic. 26: 292–297.
- ^ Loudon, John Claudius; Charlesworth, Edward; Denson, John (1829). Magazine of natural history. printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. pp. 360–364.
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- ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 837.
- ^ Brewer, John (18 March 1982). "Progressive Agenda". London Review of Books. 4 (5): 18–19.
- ^ Kainen, Jacob (1959). "Why Bewick Succeeded: A Note in the History of Wood Engraving". Smithsonian Institution United States National Museum Bulletin. 218: 185–201.
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- ^ Uglow, 2006. p. 396.
- ^ Uglow, 2006. pp. 388–389.
- ^ Audubon, John James (1831). Ornithological Biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America; accompanied by descriptions of the objects represented in the work entitled The Birds of America, and interspersed with delineations of American scenery and manners. Vol. 1. Edinburgh: Adam Black. pp. 96–97.
- ^ Bate, Jonathan (15 August 2004). "A bird in the bush is always best". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 14 January 2013.
- ^ Jordan, Mary. "Searching the Skies, Searching the Stacks: Bird Field Guides in the Watkinson Library" (PDF). 2011. Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. Retrieved 13 January 2013.
- ^ Uglow 2006, pp. 137–138
- ^ Bewick, 1847. Volume 2, page 406.
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Bibliography
- Bewick, Thomas (1797–1804). A History of British Birds. Newcastle: Beilby and Bewick.
- Birkhead, Tim (2011). The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology. London: ISBN 978-0-7475-9822-0.
- Birkhead, Tim (2018). The Wonderful Mr Willughby: The First True Ornithologist. London: ISBN 978-1-4088-7848-4.
- Birkhead, Tim; Smith, Paul J.; Doherty, Meghan; Charmantier, Isabelle (2016). "Willughby's Ornithology". In Birkhead, Tim (ed.). Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby FRS (1635–1672). Leiden: ISBN 978-90-04-28531-6.
- Charmantier, Isabelle; Johnston, Dorothy; Smith, Paul J. (2016). "The legacies of Francis Willughby". In Birkhead, Tim (ed.). Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby FRS (1635–1672). Leiden: Brill. pp. 360–385. ISBN 978-90-04-28531-6.
- Dixon, Hugh (2010). Faulkner, Tom E.; Berry, Helen; Gregory, Jeremy (eds.). Thomas Bewick and the North-Eastern Landscape. Northern Landscapes: Representations and Realities of North-East England. ISBN 9781843835417.
- Johanson, Zerina; Barrett, Paul M.; Richter, Martha; Smith, Mike (2016). Arthur Smith Woodward: His Life and Influence on Modern Vertebrate Palaeontology. Geological Society of London, Special Publications. Vol. 430. London: ISBN 978-1-86239-741-5.
- Kusukawa, Sachiko (2016). "Historia Piscium (1686) and its sources". In Birkhead, Tim (ed.). Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby FRS (1635–1672). Leiden: Brill. pp. 305–334. ISBN 978-90-04-28531-6.
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