Wilson Lowry

Wilson Lowry carved his living right out of London’s streets. He rented a tiny attic above a hat shop and turned it into a print factory, cranking out book illustrations from dawn till dark. If you’ve ever opened an old novel and felt the crisp edges of the pictures, chances are his needle did the scratching. Slide into the Beard Print Collection—flip to the 1809 and 1810 volumes—and you’ll see his delicate lines hiding in plain sight, turning every page into a quiet little gallery of its own.