Background
The son of a ship"s master, he was apprenticed at age 14 for seven years to William Forth, a Bridlington bookseller and printer.
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Benjamin Fawcett
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In 1831 he started his own business in Middle Street, Driffield, as music seller, bookbinder and printer, bookseller and stationer. His early works were mostly children"s books published by Webb & Millington of Leeds. In about 1845 he formed a close working association with Francis Orpen Morris.
This relationship would last nearly 50 years and have a profound effect on British ornithology.
Morris wrote the text for books which were financed and printed by Fawcett, and were engraved by Alexander Francis Lydon (1836-1917), who had started his career as Fawcett"s apprentice. Colour printing was a major change from the much-admired monochrome work of Thomas Bewick (1753-1828).
At first wood-engraving illustrations were coloured by hand, but later a system of colouring from multiple wood blocks was used. Hand-coloured wood engraving started with an accurate painting of the subject.
This picture was then carved on a wooden block, standing proud in order to pick up the ink.
The block was then placed in a printing press to give a black-and-white print, which was then hand-coloured. The wooden print blocks were carved with great attention detail. Pear and boxwood were sufficiently hard and fine-grained, making them durable and capable of showing fine detail.
Most of the joint works of Fawcett and Lydon were published by Groombridge, of London.
"If there was a secret which produced the fine results it would have been. Benjamin Fawcett engraving every one of the three hundred and sixty plates for this work on wood with his own hand.
The very best materials were used." Benjamin Fawcett died in January 1893, a few weeks before Francis Orpen Morris.
