Among the work on display in the Special Collections centre in the library was sketchbooks by Peter Reddick. These were for the illustration to an edition of ‘the Return of the Native’ by Thomas Hardy. Peter Reddick’s illustrations provide atmosphere and background to the reader. His work in ‘The Return of the Native’ is viewed as being particularly fine, “dark vistas of Egdon Heath often unroll over two pages with tiny Figures struggling along the pale track ways”.
His subject matter is seen as being deeply traditional cantered on an “immemorial sense of the land and of rural life”. He completed illustrations, however, in a contemporary way. He created the image by “cutting into the end grain surface of a piece of box wood, inking the surface and printing it onto paper”.
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