William James Linton

William James Linton (December 7, 1812 – December 29, 1897) was an English-born American wood-engraver, landscape painter, political reformer and author of memoirs, novels, poetry and non-fiction.

Born in Mile End, east London, his family moved to Stratford, Essex in 1818. The young Linton was educated at Chigwell Grammar School, an early 17th-century foundation attended by many sons of the Essex and City of London middle classes.

Aged 15, Linton was apprenticed to the wood-engraver George Wilmot Bonner (1796–1836). His earliest known work is to be found in John Martin and Richard Westall's Pictorial Illustrations of the Bible (1833). He worked from 1834 to 1836 with William Henry Powis, another pupil of Bonner; but Powis died. Linton then worked for two years for the firm of John Thompson.

After working as a journeyman engraver, losing his money over a cheap political library called the "National," and writing a life of Thomas Paine, Linton went into partnership in 1842 with John Orrin Smith. The firm was immediately employed on the Illustrated London News, just then projected. The following year Orrin Smith died, and Linton, who had married a sister of Thomas Wade, editor of Bell's Weekly Messenger, found himself in sole charge of a business upon which two families were dependent.

For years he had concerned himself with the social and European political problems of the time, and was now actively engaged in the republican propaganda. In 1844 he took a prominent part in exposing the violation by the English post office of Mazzini's correspondence. This led to a friendship with the Italian revolutionist, and Linton threw himself with ardor into European politics. He carried the first congratulatory address of English workmen to the French Provisional Government in 1848. He edited a twopenny weekly paper, The Cause of the People, published in the Isle of Man, and he wrote political verses for the Dublin Nation, signed "Spartacus." He helped to found the "International League" of patriots, and, in 1850, with GH Lewes and Thornton Leigh Hunt, started The Leader, an organ which, however, did not satisfy his advanced republicanism, and from which he soon withdrew.

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