Alfred Wainwright MBE (17 January 1907 – 20 January 1991) was a guidebook author and artist, best known for his seven volume Pictorial Guide Series on the Lakeland Fells, first published between 1955 and 1966. These were immensely detailed completely hand drawn books revealing the intricacies of the Lake District Fells and defining 214 fells in the Lake District now known as Wainwrights.
He was born in Blackburn, started work as an office boy in Blackburn Borough Engineer's Department, and slowly progressed his career to become the Borough Treasurer's office in Kendal, where lived for the rest of his life. He started work on the first page of his Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells on 9 November 1952, ostensibly for his own interest rather than with any intention of publication. He did, however publish book one, through a local printer. Although it was really privately published he used Henry Marshall as the publisher's name. Marshall was friend (if anyone could make that claim) and Chief Librarian of Kendal and Westmorland. Marshall also did most of the publicity and administration until the local newspaper The Westmorland Gazette took over with the publication of book six.
Wainwright extended the Pictorial Guide Series with the Pennine Way Companion, Walks in Limestone Country, The Coast to Coast, Walks on the Howgill Fells, The Outlying Fells of Lakeland and finally a small pamphlet entitled Walks From Ratty. His other main series were the Sketchbook Series which consisted primarily of full page drawings with minimal commentary and no actual walks suggested, The Mountain Drawing Series which followed the same format as the sketchbooks but in a larger size and the Photobook Series. This series was produced towards the end of his career, when his eyesight had deteriorated too much for him to produce sketches and so they used photographs. One of them used his own black and white photographs (he had always taken photographs, from which he had produced all his drawings) but for the rest two professional photographers were employed: Derry Brabbs and Ed Geldard who produced colour photographs on commission to match to Wainwright's commentary.
He also wrote a few other titles including three versions of his autobiography, Fellwanderer, Ex-Fellwanderer and Memoirs of a Fellwanderer.
Wainwright died in 1991 of a heart attack. There is stone tablet set into the windowsill of a south window of St James Church, Buttermere as a memorial to him and his ashes were scattered on his favourite mountain, Haystacks.
The main biography of Wainwright is by Hunter Davies, 'Wainwright the Biography' in which he reveals a more complex man than reader of his guides might suspect, as does indeed his own posthumously published tale A Pennine Journey.
The Wainwright Society was inaugurated in 2002, with the aim of keeping alive the things he promoted through his books.
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