Published to coincide with an exhibition of his wood engravings at the Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford in November 1981.
Volume 1 contains Mackley’s lecture given to the Print Collectors’ Club in 1967, illustrated with thirty-two reproductions of wood engravings by Monica Poole, Joan Hassall, Robert Gibbings, Clifford Webb, John Farleigh, Gertrude Hermes, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Noel Rooke, Iain Macnab, Gwenda Morgan, Nora Unwin, Agnes Miller Parker and John Buckland Wright. Sixty-seven reproductions (on sixty sheets of paper) of wood engravings by George Mackley, with printed titles and dates, are loosely contained in a pocket at the back. (Ruari McLean’s name is misspelled ‘Rauri’ at least twice in the text.)
Volume 2 includes 137 engravings by George Mackley (and Monica Poole’s tribute to him, ‘Kentish Wood’). There are sections on botanical engravings, engravings of the sea, countryside, waterways, The Netherlands, rivers, and commercial engravings including book plates.
Volume 3 is a reprint (first published in 1948) of his treatise on wood engraving.