The second edition of Pictures of East Anglian Life, issued in 1890, features ten select plates from photographer P.H. Emerson’s 1888 first edition. Stamped on the cover is this wood engraving by Emerson’s good friend, Suffolk artist Thomas Frederick Goodall, 1856-1944. The artwork is taken directly from the Emerson photograph A Stiff Pull, included in the portfolio, featuring a farmer tilling a field behind a plow pulled by two horses.

Goodall had earlier collaborated with Emerson (1856-1936) on Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, their 1886 volume of 40 platinotype views published in London. “Goodall was a member of the New English Art Club, a break-away from the Royal Academy of Arts, and his dedication to modern French-style open-air painting led him to convert a traditional East Anglian houseboat into a floating studio.” (1.)

The portfolio was designed as a teaching guide of sorts, which Photogravure.com compares to the first 1888 edition as best illustrating Emerson’s “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.”

1. Excerpt: Bright Edge Deep online resource: “Peter Henry Emerson and Thomas Frederick Goodall, Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads” accessed September, 2025