W. Read, fl. 1824-37

W. Read, fl. 1824-37

Little information is recorded about the portrait engraver W. Read who was active in London between 1824 and 1837. Of his few surviving works, however, three are Scott-related. In 1827, he engraved the frontispiece, title, and two text plates for the first number of Sholto Percy's abridged edition of the Waverley Novels, a project that was swiftly nipped in the bud by Scott's lawyers. In 1828, he engraved the 1818 portrait of Scott by Andrew Geddes and in 1832 he engraved Charles Robert Leslie's 1824 portrait for George Allan's Life of Sir Walter Scott, Baronet. The portrait engraver W. Read is probably not identical with an engraver from Elgin who illustrated Lachlan Shaw's History of the Province of Moray (1827) or a landscape engraver who contributed to Sir John Ross's Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-West Passage (1835).

Bibliography

Buss, Jacques (ed.). Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays (Paris: Gründ, 1999)
Hunnisett, Basil. A Dictionary of British Steel Engravers (Leigh-on-Sea: F. Lewis, 1980)
Thieme, Ulrich, and Felix Becker (eds). Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler: von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig: Seemann, 1907-50)
Todd, William. B., and Ann Bowden. Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History, 1796-1832 (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1998)

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