About the Illustrations
The G.A. Henty Virtual Exhibit showcases illustrations and book covers from select G.A. Henty novels from The James Alexander and Ellen Rea Benson Special Collections at Western Archives- which are works of art in and of themselves. The period covered by the publication of Henty's books (1867-1906), and their various reprints, coincides with the development of illustration techniques in 19th-century and early 20th-century Britain, which are associated with printmaking and letterpress printing. The items in this collection showcase the changes in British illustration over this time period. The collection includes illustrations that were created using the following three techniques: wood engraving, line blocks, and relief halftones. These titles and corresponding editions include The Tiger of Mysore, Redskin and Cow-boy, Maori and Settler, A Knight of the White Cross, and At the Point of the Bayonet.
Illustration Techniques in 19th-20th Century Britain
The first print illustrations were in line and they were impressed using wood blocks- often referred to as wood-cuts. The process of wood cuts involves the cutting of an image in relief on a hard, end-grain block of wood with a tool called a burin. The engraver cuts away the parts of the block that correspond to the areas in the drawing which remain white or uninked. The uncut, raised area receives the ink when the block is run through the press and thus appears black in the finished print. The illustration is then transferred to the block. However, in some cases, the artist drew the illustration on the wood block itself. Towards the end of the 19th century, however, it became common practice to print a photograph directly onto the block, thus eliminating the need for drawing onto the block. Wood cuts were followed a few years later by wood-engravings, which involved a similar procedure. Engravings were carved into the cross-section of a piece of hard wood, usually box-wood, which allowed for great detail and richness in illustration. The first pictures in Henty's books were wood engravings. For an example, see "Mr. Atherton keeps the mouth of the defile" from Maori and Settler (190?).
Pictured is an original engraved wood block by Thomas Bewick, notable 19th century engraver. The block is made to type height so it can be printed together with text on a letterpress. Also pictured, the finished wood engraving.
The successor to wood engravings in Henty's books was the line-block, under the influence of the commercial photo-engraving industry. By the late nineteenth century, a method of relief etching had developed which involved the following steps. 1) An artist's line drawing would be photographed. 2) The negative would then be exposed onto a zinc plate covered with light-sensitive gelatin. What once appeared (on the negative) as a black line on a piece of paper is now a white line against a black background. 3) The gelatin on the zinc plate is sensitized by the light through the negative in the shape of the line drawing, and the gelatin which has not been sensitized is carefully washed away. 4) The sensitized area is then covered with a wax resist; 5) Finally, the rest of the plate is etched, so that the line drawing appears in relief. See "Without a cry the Rajah fell back, shot through the head" from At the Point of the Bayonet (1902) for an example of a line-cut illustration.
Finally, another illustration method used in Henty's fiction is relief halftone. The halftone block is a variation on the line block that allows for transitions of tone or greyscale. By the turn of the 20th century, the relief half-tone dominated the illustrations found in story papers and dime novels. The printer could use either a photograph of an artist's drawing or a photograph itself. The image is developed from the photographic negative, with a screen placed between the negative and the resulting image. The screen causes the light to be transmitted into dots; the denser the image area is on the negative the smaller the dots will be on the print. Under magnification, a relief halftone looks like a series of dots which are larger and more dense in dark areas and smaller or non-existent in light areas. For a black and white example of relief halftone from Henty's work, see "Dick and Surajah make a desperate offence" from The Tiger of Mysore (189?). For colour examples, please see "They were challenged as they approached" from The Tiger of Mysore (189?) or "Drop that or I fire!" from Maori and Settler (190?).
The halftone relief process effectively eliminated the need for highly skilled wood-engravers. The impact on line blocks was less apparent, as the means by which they were being reproduced was still relatively cheap. As a result, line blocks were still used for cartoons and smaller illustrations well into the twentieth century. There was a transition period in the 1890's where all three forms of reproduction appear in story papers, as shown in Henty's body of work, but, as the 20th century progressed, wood engravings eventually disappeared.
References:
Newbolt, P. (1996). Appendix IV: Illustration and design. In G.A. Henty, 1832-1902 : A Bibliographical Study (pp. 612-644). Aldershot, England: Scolar Press.
Stanford University Libraries. (n.d.). Dime novels and penny dreadfuls: Guided tour of the print processes black and white reproduction. Retrieved from http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/prod/depts/dp/pennies/print.html