E-text prepared by Chris Curnow, Miranda van de Heijning, Joseph Cooper, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 29928-h.htm or 29928-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/29928/pg29928-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29928/29928-h.zip) Contributions from The Museum of History and Technology: Paper 11 WHY BEWICK SUCCEEDED: A Note in the History of Wood Engraving by JACOB KAINEN THE CONTEMPORARY VIEW OF BEWICK 186 LOW STATUS OF THE WOODCUT 188 WOODCUT AND WOOD ENGRAVING 189 WOOD ENGRAVING AND THE STEREOTYPE 197 WHY BEWICK SUCCEEDED: _By Jacob Kainen_ _A Note in the History of Wood Engraving_ _Thomas Bewick has been acclaimed as the pioneer of modern wood engraving whose genius brought this popular medium to prominence. This study shows that certain technological developments prepared a path for Bewick and helped give his work its unique character._ The Author: _Jacob Kainen is curator of graphic arts, Museum of History and Technology, in the Smithsonian Institution's United States National Museum._ No other artist has approached Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) as the chronicler of English rustic life. The little wood engravings which he turned out in such great number were records of typical scenes and episodes, but the artist could also give them social and moral overtones. Such an approach has attracted numerous admirers who have held him in esteem as an undoubted homespun genius. The fact that he had no formal training as a wood engraver, and actually never had a lesson in drawing, made his native inspiration seem all the more authentic. The Contemporary View of Bewick After 1790, when his _A general history of quadrupeds_ appeared with its vivid animals and its humorous and mordant tailpiece vignettes, he was hailed in terms that have hardly been matched for adulation. Certainly no mere book illustrator ever received equal acclaim. He was pronounced a great artist, a great man, an outstanding moralist and reformer, and the master of a new pictorial method. This flood of eulogy rose increasingly during his lifetime and continued throughout the remainder of the 19th century. It came from literary men and women who saw him as the artist of the common man; from the pious who recognized him as a commentator on the vanities and hardships of life (but who sometimes deplored the frankness of his subjects); from bibliophiles who welcomed him as a revolutionary illustrator; and from fellow wood engravers for whom he was the indispensable trail blazer. During the initial wave of Bewick appreciation, the usually sober Wordsworth wrote in the 1805 edition of _Lyrical ballads_:[1]