A farmer guides a plow behind a team of horses while tilling a field on the Norfolk Broads in England. The following notes from the Victoria & Albert Museum website included with this second-edition portfolio:

In 1889 Emerson published his controversial book ‘Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art’ without images. ‘Naturalistic Photography’ examined his purist approach to photography, derived from his fascination with Naturalism in art, and attacked the prevailing artificial aesthetic in art photography. After its publication Emerson felt that his opponents had misunderstood his ideas. So, in 1890 he selected 10 plates from his book ‘Pictures of East Anglian Life’ (1888) that best illustrated his theories, and presented them loose in a portfolio dedicated to the ‘photographic student’, with the same title and cover of the book. He then donated copies of this portfolio to every photographic society in the country.

A Stiff Pull was also reproduced as a wood engraving (along with the inclusion of sailboats and gulls flying overhead) by Emerson’s friend, the Suffolk artist Thomas Frederick Goodall, 1856-1944. The artwork appeared as the cover illustration to the 1888 first edition of Pictures of East Anglian Life (32 photogravures) as well as the 1890 2nd edition. (10 select photogravures)