William James Linton (December 7, 1812 – December 29, 1897) was an English-born Americanwood-engraver, landscape painter,political reformer and author of memoirs, novels, poetry and non-fiction.
Born inMile End, east London, his family moved toStratford, Essex in 1818. The young Linton was educated atChigwell Grammar School, an early 17th-century foundation attended by many sons of theEssex andCity of London middle classes.
Aged 15, Linton was apprenticed to the wood-engraverGeorge Wilmot Bonner (1796–1836). His earliest known work is to be found inJohn Martin andRichard Westall'sPictorial Illustrations of the Bible (1833).[1] He worked from 1834 to 1836 withWilliam Henry Powis, another pupil of Bonner; but Powis died. Linton then worked for two years for the firm ofJohn Thompson.[2]
After working as a journeyman engraver, losing his money over a cheap political library called the "National," and writing a life ofThomas Paine, Linton went into partnership in 1842 withJohn Orrin Smith. The firm was immediately employed on theIllustrated London News, just then projected. The following year Orrin Smith died, and Linton, who had married a sister ofThomas Wade, editor ofBell's Weekly Messenger, found himself in sole charge of a business upon which two families were dependent.[1]
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For years he had concerned himself with the social and European political problems of the time, and was now actively engaged in the republican propaganda. In 1844 he took a prominent part in exposing the violation by the English post office ofMazzini's correspondence. This led to a friendship with the Italian revolutionist, and Linton threw himself with ardor into European politics. He carried the first congratulatory address of English workmen to the French Provisional Government in 1848. He edited a twopenny weekly paper,The Cause of the People, published in theIsle of Man, and he wrote political verses for theDublin Nation, signed "Spartacus." He helped to found the "International League" of patriots, and, in 1850, withGeorge Henry Lewes andThornton Leigh Hunt, startedThe Leader, an organ which, however, did not satisfy his advancedrepublicanism, and from which he soon withdrew.[1]
The same year he wrote a series of articles propounding the views of Mazzini inThe Red Republican. In 1852 he took up his residence atBrantwood, which afterward he sold toJohn Ruskin, and from there issuedThe English Republic, first in the form of weekly tracts and afterward as a monthly magazine "a useful exponent of republican principles, a faithful record ef republican progress throughout the world; an organ of propagandism and a medium of communication for the active republicans in England." Most of the paper, which never paid its way and was abandoned in 1855, was written by himself.[1]
In 1852 he also printed for private circulation an anonymous volume of poems entitledThe Plaint of Freedom. After the failure of his paper he returned to his proper work of wood-engraving. In 1857 his wife died, and in the following year he marriedEliza Lynn (afterward known as Mrs Lynn Linton) and returned to London. The couple moved toGang Moor on the north-western extremity of Hampstead Heath in 1862.[3] In 1864 he retired to Brantwood, his wife remaining in London.[1]
In 1867, pressed by financial difficulties, Linton decided to try his fortune inAmerica. He separated from his wife, with whom, however, he remained in touch. With his children he settled at Appledore,Hamden, Connecticut, where he set up aprinting-press.[1][4]
At Hamden Linton he wrotePractical Hints on Wood-Engraving (1879),James Watson, a Memoir of Chartist Times (1879),A History of Wood-Engraving in America (1882),Wood-Engraving, a Manual of Instruction (1884),The Masters of Wood-Engraving, for which he made two journeys to England (1890),The Life of Whittier (1893), andMemories, an autobiography (1895).[1] He died at Hamden on 29 December 1897.
Linton was a singularly gifted man, who, in the words of his wife, if he had not bitten the Dead Sea apple of impracticable politics, would have risen higher in the world of both art and letters. As an engraver on wood he reached the highest point of execution in his own line. He carried on the tradition of Bewick, fought for intelligent as against merely manipulative excellence in the use of the graver, and championed the use of the "white line" as well as of the black, believing withRuskin that the former was the truer and more telling basis of aesthetic expression in the wood-block printed upon paper.[1]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Layard, George Somes (1911). "Linton, William James". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 736.
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