Charles Theodosius Heath (1 March 1785 – 18 November 1848) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 engraver

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

, currency and stamp printer, book publisher and illustrator

Illustrator

An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...

.

Life and work

Heath was the illegitmate son of James Heath

James Heath (engraver)

James Heath was an English engraver. He enjoyed the patronage of George III and successive monarchs, and was an associate engraver of the Royal Academy.-Life and work:...

, a successful engraver who enjoyed the patronage of King George III

George III of the United Kingdom

George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...

 and successive monarchs. He received his first training in the art from his father and his first known etching dates from when he was six years old. It was from his father that he learnt how to produce small plates suitable for book illustration. Early in life he became a fellow of the Society of British Artists, and contributed for some years to their exhibitions.

An entrepreneur who first mass produced steel engraving

Steel engraving

Steel engraving, is a commercial engraving technique for printing illustrations, based on steel instead of copper. It has been rarely used in artistic printmaking, although was much used for reproductions in the 19th century. Steel engraving was introduced in 1792 by Jacob Perkins , an American...

s in Britain for the purpose of illustration, he was a driving force behind, and contributor to, the new genre of the literary annual. His business ventures were the first English publications (and currency, stamps, etc) to use the new method of steel etching printing patented by Jacob Perkins

Jacob Perkins

Jacob Perkins was an Anglo-American inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist. Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Perkins was apprenticed to a goldsmith...

. Charles Heath established his own literary annual, The Keepsake

The Keepsake

The Keepsake was an English literary annual which ran from 1828 to 1857, published each Christmas for perusal during the year of the title...

, in 1827, and tried to persuade Sir Walter Scott

Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....

 to become its editor. His productions were very successful, but he often had difficulty managing his finances, and in the 1840s he had to sell much of his stock to stay afloat.

Heath owned a large studio, and a great deal of the work signed "Heath" is not actually by him; nevertheless he was very prolific. He was related by marriage to Henry Corbould

Henry Corbould

Henry Corbould was an English artist.-Life:The third son of Richard Corbould, he was born in London. He studied painting with his father, and was at an early age admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, under Fuseli, where he gained the silver medal for a study from the life...

, with whom he also had a business relationship. Charles Heath (as engraver), George Heath (financial-backer and halfrother) and Henry Corbould (designer) printed money and various stamps for multiple governments. Heath's published books are still being reprinted today.

Heath married his cousin Elizabeth Petch. Two of Heath's sons, Frederick (1810-1878) and Alfred (1812-1896), were engravers and one, Henry Charles Heath (1829-1898), was a miniature painter who portrayed Queen Victoria and other members of the royal family. Among Heath's pupils were George Thomas Doo

George Thomas Doo

George Thomas Doo George Thomas Doo George Thomas Doo (January 6, 1800, Surrey - November 13, 1886, Sutton, London was an English engraver.His teacher was Charles Heath. In 1824 he published his first plate, after a portrait of the Duke of York by Thomas Lawrence. In 1925 he went to Paris and...

 (1800-1886) and James Henry Watt (1799–1867).

Rights of engravers

Charles Heath believed that custom entitled engravers to make and keep a limited number of impressions of their work. When he was sued by the publisher, John Murray, in 1826, as a result of having made and kept such impressions, he relied on that supposed custom, but, in 1830, a jury denied its existence. Then, in 1831, the judges of the Court of King's Bench held that his conduct had been unlawful at common law, though not a breach of the Prints Copyright Act 1777.

The government disapproved when the same concept was applied to stamps, and punished the company Perkins Bacon

Perkins Bacon

Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co was a printer of books, bank notes and postage stamps, most notable for printing the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamps, in 1840.- Origins :...

 by stopping their printing of the stamps briefly. Charles Heath had encouraged Jacob Perkins

Jacob Perkins

Jacob Perkins was an Anglo-American inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist. Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Perkins was apprenticed to a goldsmith...

 to come to England and cofounded an English company with him; the company name was changed when Joshua Butters Bacon bought out the Heath interest in the company.

External links

• Short biography by J. J. Heath-Caldwell
• Biography (London Atelier of representational art)
• Charles Heath ( The Walter Scott Digital Archive, Edinburgh University}
• Commentary on "The Country Girl" (William Wordsworth
  William Wordsworth
  William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
  
  's writing for "The Keepsake"] ("Romantic Circles", University of Maryland
  University of Maryland
  When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...