SOURCE: Wakeman, Geoffrey. “Wood Engraving, 1850-1900.” In Victorian Book Illustration: The Technical Revolution, pp. 69-81. Newton Abbot, England: David & Charles, 1973.

In the following essay, Wakeman describes the technical innovations affecting illustration and publishing in the latter half of the nineteenth century, including improvements in the printing press, electrotype, and photography. Wakeman stresses the difficulties in realizing the original vision of the artist in the published work.

The ‘sixties’ School

In the second half of the century two styles of wood engraving are discernible—the old vignette and a new style based on painting and pen and ink drawing. The latter was often alarmingly divorced from any consideration of illustration as part of book design, an unfortunate development associated principally with what is known in the history of book illustration as ‘The Sixties’. This is a convenient label attached to work done, mainly between 1855 and 1875, by a number of...