The Pictorial Publisher: Agents, Technologies and the Illustrated Book in Britain 1830-1850Will FinleyUniversity of Sheffield and the British Library

‘Bohn’, Steel Etching by Henry Winkles after drawing by William Tombleson, 1832

’Town Hall Cologne’, Steel Etching by John Clark after drawing by William Tombleson, 1832

We cannot say where the cheapness is to stop, and daily look for some publication, which the purchaser will be paid for taking. Steel, steam, and extensive circulation, may bring prints to this at last.’‘Tombleson’s Views of the Rhine’, The Literary Gazette, July 1832, 474.

Graph showing the instances of embellishments, half-page illustrations and plates in 511 topographical works from 1810-1850.

‘From the materials for such a volume a large folio might have been produced; but our object has been to condense and arrange in as small a compass as possible, all the useful information the subject can afford; this giving to the pubic a work, at a comparatively trifling expense, which details all that could be learned from far more expensive and bulky volumes.’

Robert Sears, A New and Popular Pictorial Description of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the British Isles (1847), 7.

F.P. Palmer and Alfred Crowquill, The Wanderings of a Pen and Pencil (London, 1846).

Wood engraving of Blair-Athole Castle, printed in James Browne, The History of the Highlands and the Highland Clans (London and Glasgow, 1845), 120.

Wood engraving of the Port of Monteith, printed in A Series of Select Views of Perth (London, 1844), 94.

‘“The age of folios” has indeed passed away-even the county history, the last to lay aside the venerable form in which alone our forefathers believed all learning and research could be enshrined, has been compelled to come forth in quarto, with ample margin and wide spreading letter-press, instead of the closely packed double columns that gladdened the hearts of our Dugdales and Stukeleys. It is doubtless in compliance with the taste of the age, that the work before us makes its appearance in a series of monthly pamphlets; and instead of being divided into books and chapters, in which each separate question of antiquities or natured history would be fully and right learnedly discussed, it takes the popular form of a tour, and leads us along from town to village, from cromlech to abbey, after the gossiping fashion of the day.’

The Athenaeum, 30 July 1842, 681.

Charles Knight, The Pictorial History of England, 2nd Edition (London, 1849)

Graph showing the illustration distribution in eight volumes of Charles Knight’s A Pictorial History of England (London, 1849).

Graph showing the illustration area of Charles Knight’s A Pictorial History of England, Second Edition, Vol. 1 (London, 1849)

Graph Showing the illustration area of Charles Knight’s A Pictorial History of England, Vol. 2, Second Edition (London, 1849)

Graph showing the illustration area of Charles Knight’s A Pictorial History of England, Vol. 7 Second Edition (London, 1849)

I may truly say-and I say it for the encouragement of any young man who is sighting over the fetters of his daily labour, and pining for weeks and months of uninterrupted study-that I have found through life that the acquisition of knowledge, and a regular course of literary employment, are far from being incompatible with commercial pursuits. I doubt whether, if I had been all author or all publisher, I should have succeeded better in either capacity.

Charles Knight, Passages of A Working Life, Vol. I (London, 1864), 205.

Graph showing the illustration distribution of Charles Knight’s A Popular History of England, in 8 Vols (London, 1856-62)

Graph showing the illustration distribution of John Cassell’s An Illustrated History of England, in 8 Vols (London, 1856-1862).

Wood engraving of ’A Caledonian, or Pict’, in Cassell’s Illustrated History of England, Vol. 1 (1857), 6

Wood engraving of the landing of Julius Caesar, in Cassell’s Illustrated History of England, Vol. 1 (1857), 7.

Engraving and Etching of Boudica haranguing her troops, printed in Camden’s History of England (London, 1810).

Wood engraved Frontispiece depicting Boudica’s leading her troops, printed in Cassell’s Illustrated History of England, Vol. 1 (London, 1857).

https://github.com/UCL-dataspring/visualisations/tree/master/find_all_figures/micro