SOURCE: Goldman, Paul. “The Explosion in Popular Publishing.” In Victorian Illustrated Books, 1850-1870: The Heyday of Wood-Engraving, pp. 35-44. London: British Museum Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Goldman discusses the factors contributing to the dramatic increase in illustrated fiction during the mid-nineteenth century. Goldman considers social and economic reasons as well as the technical developments that made increased production possible.

The reasons why the 1860s saw such a growth in imaginative illustration, and indeed in illustration as a whole, must now be examined. This growth of creative illustration was paralleled in other areas, such as technical and topographical illustration, but both of these fall outside my brief here. Colour illustration too expanded by leaps and bounds, but this again falls beyond the scope of the collection.

The reasons for the increase come under three main headings: social/educational, economic and technical/mechanical. A combination of these factors created...