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As
printing developed from a hand craft to a technology during
the Victorian era, so book illustration also changed to satisfy
the demands of a growing readership eager for 'thousands of
copies to be multiplied without any deterioration'.
The traditional
relief process of wood engraving, with the 'white line' tonal
effect pioneered by Thomas Bewick at the end of the eighteenth
century, had been eagerly revived in England in the early
years of the nineteenth century. As the century went on it
continued to be used extensively, especially at the cheaper
end of the market and for magazine illustration, where the
development of stereotyping and electrotyping made it possible
to produce casts of the original wood block for use in long
print runs. From the 1860s wood engraving, and particularly
colour printing in relief, reached a height of popularity
in book illustration, as artists such as Walter Crane found
it to be a simple and efficient means of reproduction.
At the
same time, advances in technology permitted a greater degree
of experimentation in the arts. Steel could provide a stronger
printing plate than copper so that a greater number of prints
could be made; it also allowed etched and engraved lines to
be finer, and more closely cut, to give a more subtle tonal
impression. Such an outline was ideal for hand colouring,
although this was an expensive method of applying colour.
In the 1830s George Baxter experimented with the commercial
reproduction of prints in colours to meet the particular demands
of a limited market still prepared to pay high prices for
aesthetically appealing books, while Charles Knight, and later
Thomas Nelson, investigated the possibilities of cheap colour
printing. Lithography proved a versatile and increasingly
popular process from the 1830s, used for expensive, lavishly
illustrated, albums as well as mass-produced promotional material.
By the 1890s the application of photography to the printing
process had not only eliminated the need for any reinterpretation
of an artist's design in order for it to be printed, but now
allowed an image to be both directly and mechanically transferred
to the printing surface. This encouraged artists such as Beardsley
to work specifically with photomechanical processes in mind.
The following
illustrations, although they are by leading artists, have
been chosen primarily because they are good examples of the
various methods employed at the time. They emphasise the enormous
variety of Victorian illustrated books, from periodicals to
fiction, to natural history and travel, art books and children's
books, from expensive limited editions to cheap books for
the mass market
Helen
Peden
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