George Walker's colour plates for the Costume of Yorkshire was originally issued with accompanying text in 10 monthly parts, before being published as a complete book in 1814. The Royal Library copy appears to be a bound collection of the separately issued parts, as it lacks a title page or frontispiece.

Descriptions and illustrations of life in Yorkshire in the early 19th century include sea bathing (which the text claims 'occasions very ludicrous scenes'); a woman making oatcakes ('a very thin cake … by no means unpalatable'); and a collier (with 'a delineation of the steam engine lately invented by Mr. Blenkinsop'). Many of the workers depicted, from factory children to merchants bargaining in the cloth hall, are part of the clothing and textile trade that had turned the north of England into a manufacturing powerhouse by the 19th century.

George Walker, himself a Yorkshireman, was encouraged to produce this work by the publishers Robinson & Son of Leeds. His illustrations of the various styles of dress worn by those participating in professions and pastimes especially particular to Yorkshire are an illuminating insight not only into what its 19th-century residents wore, but also into how they worked and how they spent their time.

Descriptions of plates

Plate VI shows 'The Cloth Dresser'. Here a man (known as a ‘cropper’) uses shears to cut the surface of a piece of fulled woollen cloth resulting in a smooth surface.

Plate XXI is the 'Preemer Boy'. On the left, two men work on a piece of green woollen cloth, raising the nap using prickly teasel seedheads attached to wooden handles. On the right sits the ‘preemer boy’, who removes pieces of wool from the teasels.