Do judge the book by its cover

Take a good dollop of Victorian innovation, add a fistful of classics, season it liberally with creative genius and you'll cook up the very British art of literary illustration. Carla Passino charts its history and discovers that it still thrives

- Carla Passino

It was in the summer of 1853 that wood engraver and draughtsman Robert Langton sparked Britain's book-illustration revolution. He had been experimenting with photographic techniques and eventually managed to take some ‘beautiful specimens’—including a portrait of himself—‘not on metal plates, or on paper, or on glass, but on blocks of box wood,’ as The Manchester Guardian reported on July 30. The newspaper speculated on the many possible applications of these ‘daguerrotypes on wood’, from producing accurate machinery drawings to decorating snuff boxes, but it was publishing that would take great advantage of the discovery. Langton's innovation helped propel British book (and periodical) illustration to unprecedented heights, leading American artist Joseph Pennell to write in his 1895 Modern Illustration: ‘It is in England alone that illustration, like many other things, has been taken seriously.’

It hadn't always been like that, although book illustration did see a wave of popularity in 18th-century Britain. From the 1730s, Thomas Boreman thought he could ‘allure Children to Read’ with illustrated books. Later, Thomas Bewick used wood engravings to bring A History of British Birds to life; William Blake turned his poems into illuminated books with relief etchings; and John Newbery promised parents to ‘make Tommy a good boy and Polly a good girl’ with A Little Pretty Pocket-Book—but reeled in children with brightly illustrated covers. These efforts paved the way for many more beautifully illustrated books in the early 19th century—not least, in 1823, German Popular Stories with etchings by George Cruikshank. Yet, at the time, Britain was no more distinguished in the art of illustrating than France or Germany.