ILLUSTRATED PUBLICATIONS are a remarkable feature of the literature of our times. The employment of illustrations or pictorial sketches to render books more intelligible and attractive, has long been common, but has of late years been carried to an extent previously unknown. There are two methods of illustration: by copper or steel-plate engravings, which, being on leaves apart from the text, are executed mit:i rately: and by wood-engravings, which, inserted as blocks in the typography, are printed as part of the work. 'Wood-engraving is not new, but it was little employed for general illustration until comparatively recent times. Throughout the 18th and the first quarter of the 19th c., illustrations, for the most part, consisted of separate engravings on copper. See ENGRAVING. In the early part of the 19th Q., books of travels and works of a fanciful kind, and also in natural history, issued in London, were illustrated chiefly by aquatint engravings. Among the artists who were noted for this species of illustra tion were Rowlandson, John Clark, and the Cruikshanks, and as the engravings were colored by hand, they were particularly attractive. Clark was principally employed to illustrate voyages and travels. In the preparation of designs for these illustrations, the author of the work was usually much indebted to the artist, who, in many cases, was furnished with only a few scratches to guide him in his representations. The use of
aquatint engravings was at length superseded by lithography; but before this new species of illustration came greatly into vogue, wood-engraving took the place of all kinds of illustration except that of the high-class line steel-engravings, which are still in use for costly publications. The taste for illustrated works first sprung up in Eng land, and thence it extended to France, Germany, and the United States. From 1S20 to about 1830 was the great era of illustrated annuals (q.v.). The taste for these trated year-books ultimately wore itself out, and was succeeded by a demand for highly illustrated books of poetry by popular authors, such as Rogers, Byron, and Campbell, and in the disposal of these elee:ant works, some publishers realized handsome fortunes. Latterly, illustration has consisted for the greater part in wood-engravings, for they possess the inestimable sdvantage of being printed with the and in the hands of high-class artists, the design and execution of these embellishments have reached extraordinary perfection. Executed with comparative cheapness and rapidity, wood-engravings have been largely employed to illustrate popular periodicals, encyclo paedias, and newspapers. The Illustrated London News, which was the first, is still the leading illustrated paper; The Graphic, a more recent publication, is its chief rival.
See WOOD-ENGRAVING.