Wood Block and Wood-engraving
The following illustrations are printed from wood. This particular process entailed printing an engraved outline first, then adding colors with a suite of wood blocks, much like a Japanese print.
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The Chatterbox. New York: Frank Leslie’s
Publishing House, 1879-80.
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Wood engraving had been used as a cover illustration technique since the 1810s, when chapbooks for children appeared with engraved designs. George Cruikshank produced his popular Fairy Library in the 1850s at the same time that Dickens’s novels were being presented to the public one part at a time, each with wood-engraved covers.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. May 1864-November 1865. London: Chapman and Hall.
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Punch. London: New Library Series, 1885-1886.
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Wood-engraving, combined with the popularity of scandalous pictures in Victorian newspapers, brought about the “yellow back” railway novel and the “penny dreadful” or “dime novel” in the 1880s. The former were adventure books and historical novels with glazed paper covers (most often yellow, but also green, blue, or red) and a scene to attract the reader. The latter were the forerunner of comic books, with wild boy’s stories and lurid illustrations in a tabloid format.
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Lawson, W. B. Dashing Diamond Dick, Jr. in Danger, or a Queer Game
at Maverick. New York: Street & Smith, 1900.
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Browning, Robert. The Pied Piper of Hamelin. London: Frederick Warne, ca. 1910. Illustrated by Kate Greenaway.
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