Though usually referred to by Ruskin as 'the Yorkshire Series', the correct title of this book, issued in parts in 1819-23 with 20 plates engraved on copper after Turner, is Whitaker's History of Richmondshire. An account of the work may be found in Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, pp.xxxvii-xxxix, where it is described as 'one of Turner's most brilliant successes in book illustration'.
Ruskin regarded the series 'as indicating one of the culminating points in Turner 's career' ( MP I:124), and considered the engravings to be 'very valuable, though singularly inferior to the drawings' ( MP I:169). In a letter to his father of 23 January 1852 he listed the Yorkshire drawings among those which 'I want, and which, some time in my life, if I can, I hope to possess at all events a few of' ( Works, 13.xlix); and he did acquire some of them. In another letter to his father of 20 June 1858 he described the series as being 'the exponents of Turner's mind at his highest and purest period of aspiration and self-control' ( Works, 13.555n) - an interesting choice of words to use in describing these early works, given the negative view he took of Turner's later development after his arrangement of the Turner Bequest in 1857-58. He was dismayed by the deterioration in many of the watercolours which exposure to light had wrought, as he explained in a letter to The Literary Gazette of 13 November 1858 ( Works, 13.331). The following year found him seeking out the original subjects of Turner's Yorkshire compositions, explaining in a letter to his father of 1 March 1859 that 'it is necessary for me to see these Yorkshire subjects, which I look upon as on the whole the chief tutors of Turner's mind' ( Works, 7.xlviii).