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William Henry Pyne was a talented artist with a preference for drawing people and their costumes as well as their animals. He exhibited waterclours at the Royal Academy aged 21 and in 1841 helped to found the Society of Painters in Water Colours. He was employed by the publisher, Rudolf Ackermann. However it was a different publisher, William Miller, who commissioned The Costume of Great Britain which Pyne wrote as well as illustrated. It contains 60 full-colour illustrations. Pyne was no good with money and ended up in a debtors prison in 1828 and again in 1835. He died eight years later after a long illness.
The Costume of Great Britain is folio sized (11.5x15.5 inches) with 60 hand-engraved aquatints. In the first edition (1804) these were not coloured, the second edition 1808 had partially colored illustrations -mainly coloured backgrounds and the third edition had full colour illustrations. This is the one in the Charlecote library. He depicts people from every walk of life and gives us an insight into the working conditions at the beginning of the 19th Century.