Thomas Bewick was the finest of all English practicioners of wood engraving and was the first person to make the work of the illustrator as important, in books for children, as the text. Born in 1735, in rural England, Bewick early on showed his skill in draftsmanship by covering the hearthstones of his home with chalk drawings and filling the margins of his school books with penciled sketches. At age 14, he was apprenticed to an engraver in the town of Newcastle and later joined his master a...
