Charles Heath was born on 1 March 1785. He was the son of James Heath, Engraver to the King. Apprenticed to his father, he made such progress that in 1801, Benjamin West, PRA commissioned him to engrave the painting Our Lord Healing the Sick. Heath’s talent however, lay in the production of smaller plates for book illustration, at which, he was deemed to have perfected his father’s style. He was soon so much in demand that he formed a workshop of assistants and pupils. At first, they specialised in topographical prints, but soon turned to figure work, contributing to popular editions of English classics. Heath has been credited with producing, for Thomas Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope (1820), the first British plates to feature engraving on steel, rather than copper. Whereas the latter could produce only a few thousand prints, the latter was capable of producing tens, or even hundreds of thousands. As early as 1809 Heath engraved six designs by Richard Westall for John Sharpe’s illustrated edition of The Lay of the Last Minstrel and a further design by Westall for Sharpe’s edition of Marmion (to which Heath’s father also contributed). In 1810 he again engraved a design by Westall for Sharpe’s The Lady of the Lake, followed by designs for Westall and Singleton for Constable’s sixth edition of Marmion. In 1812, he engraved a design by Thomas Stothard (with whom his father had frequently collaborated) for White & Co’s edition of the Vision of Don Roderick and, the following year, three designs by the same artist for the thriteenth (Ballantyne) edition of Rokeby. In 1815 he engraved four designs by Westall for Longman’s edition of The Lord of the Isles. Heath was also employed as art editor on the increasingly popular annuals such as the Forget Me Not, Literary Souvenir, and The Amulet. He felt that the market for such productions was largely untapped and that it might permit him the opportunity to work as his own proprietor and permit him to deal with publishers on his own terms. In 1823, he engraved all the title-page vignettes and five frontispieces for Constable’s 4th edition of The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott. (He was also to provide vignettes for the fifth edition in 1830). It was partly the reputation won by his exceptionally popular engravings of Scott’s works that persuaded Heath to set up as his own proprietor. In 1827, he established his own annual The Keepsake, for which he attempted to recruit the leading literary figures of the day. Knowing Walter Scott’s financial position, Heath invited him to edit the annual. Scott thought the plates ‘beyond comparison’ but, as his journal records (30 January 1828), declined the offer. He nonetheless managed to sell Heath three stories for the publication. The Keepsake was followed, in 1832, by Heath’s Picturesque Annual and, in 1833, by Heath’s Book of Beauty. Heath was equally active in producing and promoting large-scale pictorial monographs such as Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales. Heath was constantly engaged on Walter Scott-related projects throughout his lengthy professional career. As his engravings were frequently republished, it is difficult to ascertain the first date of publication for each and to calculate precisely how many Scott illustrations he engraved. Besides the difficulty in ascertaining how much Heath contributed to the productions of his atelier, it is also difficult to establish whether an engraving signed ‘Heath’ is in fact the work of Charles or of his father. From 1828 onwards, Heath engraved relatively little, increasingly delegating the work to his two sons Frederick Augustus (1810-78) and Alfred (1812-96). A third son, Henry became Miniature Painter to Queen Victoria, while his daughter Fanny married the artist Edward Henry Corbould (a second-cousin), whose designs would be extensively engraved by the Heaths. The family business branched out into security engraving for banknotes and in 1840, Charles and Frederick were responsible for the engraving of the world’s first postage stamp, the ‘Penny Black’. Despite his talents, Charles Heath suffered constant financial difficulties. He was bankrupted in 1821 and was forced to sell engravings to raise money in 1826 and 1840 and drawings by artists in 1839. Nonetheless, he continued to produce illustrated books, such as Heath’s Beauties of the Opera and Ballet until his death on 18 November 1848. His obituary in the Art Union declared ‘that he has probably created as much work for his professional brethren as any living man’.