He was educated at private schools, first in Oxford, and then in London, where the family moved in 1829.
[1] Nearly all the illustrations in the Cornhill Magazine were engraved by Swain, and he also worked largely for other periodicals such as Once a Week, Good Words, The Argosy, and for the publications of the Religious Tract Society and the Baptist Missionary Society.
He engraving extensively after Fred Walker, John Everett Millais, Frederick Sandys, Richard Doyle, Richard Ansdell, Fred Barnard, and other major illustrators, from 1860 onwards.
[1] A series of articles on Fred Walker, Charles Henry Bennett, George John Pinwell, and Fritz Eltze, which Swain wrote for Good Words (1888–89), were incorporated in Toilers in Art, edited by Henry C. Ewart (1891).
They had three daughters and a son, Joseph Blomeley Swain, who carried on the printing and engraving establishment.