With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy...' Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte's heroine was not alone in her enjoyment of Thomas Bewick's British Birds - since its first publication in 1797 it has become one of the best-loved classics of natural history. Bewick's masterful woodcuts are more than scientific records; each beady eye and jaunty pose betrays the artist's love of birds. This edition includes over 180 bird species, from garden favourites such as robins, blackbirds and finches, to predators such as the osprey and the majestic golden eagle. Each entry is illustrated with an engraving, and throughout the book are narrative vignettes typical of Bewick's playful, engaging style.

In this superb biography, Uglow tells the story of the farmers son who influenced book illustration for a century to come. It is a story of violent change, radical politics, lost ways of life, and the beauty of the wild--a journey to the beginning of a lasting obsession with the natural world.

Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) was the foremost wood engraver of his generation, and the quality of his work has remained unsurpassed. His extraordinary woodcuts of animals and birds made him famous, and he dramatically influenced the development of the illustrated book in both England and America. Yet Bewick was no isolated creative genius toiling in an artists atelier, but a trade engraver in the heart of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, working at the very moment when the Industrial Revolution was beginning to change the world. This book celebrates the skill of the artist by presenting 60 engravings, some never published before, and by offering a historical perspective.

‘Every time I leave the world of work, family and community to wade into a river with fly rod in hand, I enter a sacred space that sometimes finds expression in the written word.’ In Casting into Mystery, writer Robert Reid and wood engraver Wesley W. Bates—avid anglers, both—put ink to paper in homage to the venerable sport of fly fishing. Through text and image, they recall with fondness the ‘company of rivers’ each is grateful to know, providing a glimpse inside a sporting culture teeming with literature, art and music. Part memoir, part objet d’art and part field guide, Casting into Mystery will delight passionate fly fishing practitioners and armchair anglers alike.

In the village of Wreay, near Carlisle, stands the strangest and most magical church in Victorian England. This vivid, original book tells the story of its builder, Sarah Losh, strong-willed and passionate and unusual in every way. Born into an old Cumbrian family, heiress to an industrial fortune, Sarah combined a zest for progress with a love of the past. In the church, her masterpiece, she let her imagination flower - there are carvings of ammonites, scarabs and poppies; an arrow pierces the wall as if shot from a bow; a tortoise-gargoyle launches itself into the air. And everywhere there are pinecones, her signature in stone. The church is a dramatic rendering of the power of myth and the great natural cycles of life and death and rebirth. Sarah's story is also that of her radical family - friends of Wordsworth and Coleridge; of the love between sisters and the life of a village; of the struggle of the weavers, the coming of the railways, the findings of geology and the fate of a young northern soldier in the Afghan war. Above all, though, it is about the joy of making and the skill of local, unsung craftsmen.

Winner of the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography and a New York Times bestseller: a prize-winning, critically acclaimed memoir on life and aging —“An honest joy to read” (Alice Munro). Hailed as “a virtuoso exercise” (Sunday Telegraph), this book reflects candidly, sometimes with great humor, on the condition of being old. Charming readers, writers, and critics alike, the memoir won the Costa Award for Biography and made Athill, then ninety-one, a surprising literary star. Diana Athill was one of the great editors in British publishing. For more than five decades she edited the likes of V. S. Naipaul and Jean Rhys, for whom she was a confidante and caretaker. As a writer, Athill made her reputation for the frankness and precisely expressed wisdom of her memoirs. Writing in her ninety-first year, "entirely untamed about both old and new conventions" (Literary Review) and freed from any of the inhibitions that even she may have once had, Athill reflects candidly, and sometimes with great humor, on the condition of being old—the losses and occasionally the gains that age brings, the wisdom and fortitude required to face death. Distinguished by "remarkable intelligence...[and the] easy elegance of her prose" (Daily Telegraph), this short, well-crafted book, hailed as "a virtuoso exercise" (Sunday Telegraph) presents an inspiring work for those hoping to flourish in their later years.

A Conspiracy of Ravens presents readers with a compendium of collective bird nouns from the distant and not-so-distant past. This book collects more than one hundred of the best and most imaginative expressions and illustrates them with charming woodcuts by the eighteenth-century artist and naturalist Thomas Bewick.