The wood engravings of Joan Hassall (1906-1988) added style to many literary classics, not least to novels by Jane Austen, Mrs Gaskell and the Brontes. A Londoner, Joan visited Malham in 1932, remarking to a friend: “It was just like falling in love. I have never been the same since.” Dr Bill Mitchell, of Giggleswick, a former Methodist local preacher, has special memories of meeting Joan at Malham, first after a chapel service – she was sometimes called upon to play the pipe organ – and then during a languid afternoon at her attractively-furnished Priory Cottage.

In springtime 1981, I drove towards Malham and the Cove. Rays of sunlight were as intense as a searchlight beam. The fine details of the scene were revealed with such clarity I had a fanciful idea of looking at one of Joan Hassall’s wood engravings.

At her cottage home in the village, Joan – wood engraver, book illustrator and typographer – exulted in the brightness and warmth of a springtime day. From a window seat, she could see Windy Pike.

Joan said: “The Dales scenery is unrelentingly noble, full of surprises and unfoldings.”

I was in the company of a book illustrator accustomed to studying the basic features of a person or scene.

Joan cut her first wood engravings in 1931. Among her many achievements was the design of the invitation card for the Coronation of our present Queen.

How did a Londoner, a nationally-renowned artist, come to live in a cottage at the head of a Yorkshire valley?

She had been ill and convalescence was proving difficult. An art teacher called Miss Greta Hopkins offered to drive her to Priory Cottage, being quietly confident that Joan would find Malhamdale both healthful and stimulating.

The Hassall family holidays had been spent on the Essex coast – an area of low horizons and endless salt marshes. Her father devoted much of his time to collecting flints. “So when I came up here, I was stunned by the grandeur of the landscape. I can’t fully describe the impact it had on me because it changed my whole life,” she said.

Greta Hopkins had “a funny little open car she called The Greener Pea”. She had first used Hilltop Cottage, Malham, through the kindness of William Shackleton, an artist, and his wife. It was from this cottage that Joan Hassall – new to Malhamdale – had sauntered forth with sketchbook and bottle of ink.

“I went to Gordale, as everyone does, then turned round to look back and saw the wonderful scene.”

Artistically, her Dales experience began when she captured the form and character of Gordale from the approaches in a picture entitled A Yorkshire Road.

On the death of William Shackleton, his widow allowed Joan the occasional use of the cottage.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, she deputised for a teacher concerned with wood engraving and book production at the Edinburgh College of Art.

After six years, Joan returned to a bomb-damaged (but now repaired) family home in London to care for her ageing parents.

In Malhamdale, Greta Hopkins bought Priory Cottage and invited Joan to help her move in, which she did. Just before Greta died she gave the cottage to Joan. Joan was so fond of Mrs Shackleton and had so many pleasant memories of Hilltop Cottage, where she had originally stayed, that she kept the curtains and hung them in Priory Cottage.

Joan could be seen walking through the village wearing dark cloakish garments and with clogs on her feet.

She had some notable visitors, including Norman Painting, who had been a lodger at her London home and was one of the original members of the cast of the BBC radio series, The Archers. He died last year, aged 85.

Joan lived quietly – that had been her way down the long years. A serenity of temper enabled her to overcome frequent bouts of ill-health. Eventually, she gave up wood-engraving and concentrated on her cats.

In my chat with her, I concentrated on her family connections and her work.

John Hassall, her father, was a principal of the London School of Art who could not afford a trained secretary. Joan had taken what little she had out of the post office, bought a typewriter “and started poking at it with two fingers”.

Father was dubbed the “King of Posters” after devising a striking poster featuring a happy mariner with the slogan “Skegness is so bracing”.

In conveying her own special vision of the world through lines cut on boxwood, Joan had carried on the English tradition of wood engraving – a tradition that had begun in the mid-18th century with the work of Thomas Bewick.

Wood engraving had come to Joan’s notice during student days at the Royal Academy Schools.

“A student who was attending a class that was about to close for lack of numbers asked me to join. I had a sort of revelation when the teacher showed us one of his blocks, which were beautifully engraved. Though it may sound immodest, in an absolute flash I was convinced that I knew how to do it.”

An engraver must soon become accustomed to working with the reverse image. Joan admitted there had been a time early on when she had forgotten this. She engraved a whole block of a horseman, having forgotten to reverse it.

“I had to do the whole thing again.”

Wood engravings were commissioned for a book by Francis Brett Young, who was then a popular novelist. Joan provided the illustrations for an edition of Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford.

There followed a commission from the Folio Society to illustrate the complete works of Jane Austen. The combination of Margaret Lane’s prose with Joan Hassall’s illustrations gave distinction to a book based on Mrs Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Bronte.

After our chat, Joan led me across a sunlit yard to what she called her Work Barn. It was flavoured by apples.

Her hand press, made in 1832, was still in perfect working order. The engraving tools had been purchased in 1931.

I was shown a tin “of wonderful ink” bought immediately after the war. It was now, in the early 1980s, almost used up. Her favourite paper was Basingwerke parchment. She applied the “inker” to a wood engraving she picked up at random. The old press thwacked as pressure was applied. Joan peeled the paper from the block of wood and I found myself with the study of a hedgehog that adorns this article. That proof was a much-treasured gift from an artist I had long admired.

Coming to Malham from the impersonal Notting Hill Gate, in London, where neighbours did not recognise each other, Joan found that, at this dalehead village, everyone was kind to each other.

She never ceased to be thankful to Greta for leaving her the cottage.

“When it’s warm enough, I sit, just admiring the view – and thinking how lucky I am to be here...”