William James Linton was one of those late-Victorians who achieved success in more than one art. The finest wood engraver of his time, Linton won critical acclaim from his contemporaries for his poetry and translations. His imaginative vigor saved him from sentimentality while his sense of melody, economy of phrasing, and gentle epigrammatic irony gave his poems dramatic and lyrical coherence.

Linton was born on 7 December 1812 at Ireland's Row off Mile End Road, London, in comfortable circumstances. He had a younger brother, Henry Duff Linton, who also became a wood engraver. His mother, with a little money of her own, had strong pretensions to a genteel upbringing; she was also rigid in her religious and social beliefs, which eventually alienated Linton from her. On the other hand, his father, William Linton, who made his living at the Stepney riverside as a broker, had a taste for radical politics...