Book Arts in the Victorian Era

by

Nicholas Frankel

• LAST MODIFIED: 17 April 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199799558-0225

Introduction

Victorian developments in the book arts—commonly understood as the specialized arts of printing, typography, bookbinding, illustration, illumination, papermaking, and so forth that go toward the material creation of a book—owe a great deal to the period’s evolving consciousness that a book no less than a painting or sculpture could be a work of art. They owe much also to the rapid proliferation of books and other print media, to improvements in literacy, technology, communications, and lighting, to ever faster and cheaper modes of production, and to the demands of a growing, more diverse, and more literate population. (See the separate Oxford Bibliographies article “Publishing”). These changes sparked invention and innovation, and while the demands of the mass market meant that the vast majority of Victorian books were produced cheaply with little concern for the quality and artistry of their manufacture, there was a growing understanding, at least among a small minority, that the book arts could strengthen and enhance a book’s verbal text. Bookbinding, illustration, and illumination all flourished, while the arts of letterpress printing, typography, and paper manufacture generally lagged behind until the century’s final decade, when a so-called revival of printing was discernible among a small cadre of new publishing firms. This revival is witnessed too in books privately printed from the late-1870s onward at the Daniel Press, in Oxford, after its founder Henry Daniel rediscovered the ancient Fell types once used by Oxford University Press. Still more can it be perceived in the work of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press (1891–1898) and the private presses that came in Morris’s wake. These presses rejected the industrial and commercial premises of trade publication entirely in favor of a thoroughgoing commitment to the printed book as a work of art and craft. They embraced the Albion handpress, printed on only the finest unbleached linen-based papers, created original typefaces, illuminated capitals and decorative page borders, and generally emphasized the artisanal crafts of bookmaking. Now regarded as constituting a veritable private press “movement,” these presses fostered a massive reinvigoration of just about all the book arts in the closing decade of the Victorian period. And while they had a limited effect on the worlds of commercial publishing and mass-printing in the Victorian period itself, the Victorian private presses marked the dawn of an ever-widening appreciation for what has been called “slow print.” Their effects were felt long into the twentieth century.

General Overviews of the Victorian Book Arts

McKitterick 2009 provides an excellent short overview of Victorian changes in the printed book’s look, and Twyman 1994 gives a compelling short account of the rise of what he calls the graphic book. The most comprehensive survey of the Victorian book arts is McLean 1972, which remains unsurpassed in its breadth, and identifies both technical achievements and artistic highpoints. McLean embraces the arts of printing, typography, illustration, bookbinding, illumination, and book decoration—often in synthesis with one another—as well as identifying key figures. However, McLean 1972 stops short around 1880. Those seeking a more detailed overview of the period’s closing decades should consult Russell Taylor 1980, which identifies a key strain in late-Victorian trade book design; Mazur Thomson 2015, which surveys innovations after 1880 and provides a sophisticated discussion of the relationships between visual and verbal components in late-Victorian trade books; and the opening chapters of McLean 1958, which give a concise overview of the private press movement and its impact on book design. McLean was working before the rise of literary theory, feminist theory, and cultural studies. Janzen Kooistra 2011, by contrast, reflects the influence of all three, and while it remains tightly-focused on a relatively narrow historical period as well as impressively grounded in material and bibliographic details, Janzen Kooistra 2011 attends to the markets and readers for mid-Victorian illustrated gift books, touching on matters of politics, gender, and class that are rare in discussions of the book arts. McGann 2005 appears narrowly focused on a single late-Victorian book, but it exemplifies its author’s more well-known writings on literature’s textual condition or visible language and constitutes a rich, concise inquiry into the book arts’ relevance to the practice of reading. Two finely-curated exhibition catalogues also provide a succinct overview of the Victorian book arts. Forsythe Paul 2023, focused partly on how luxury book manufacture provided roles for female book artists, is well organized, expertly researched and nicely illustrated. The same can be said of Korey 1995: based on books in the Ruari McLean Collection, it forms an excellent complement to McLean 1972 even as it shares in some of the historical limitations of that work. Bettley 2001, by contrast, is not an exhibition catalogue and nor is it focused squarely on the Victorian period. But it showcases Victorian books in Britain’s National Art Library (part of the V & A Museum), and many of its chapters contain much to interest the Victorianist.

• Bettley, James, ed. The Art of the Book: From Medieval Manuscript to Graphic Novel. London: V & A Publications, 2001.

  One chapter of Bettley’s beautifully-illustrated survey is given over entirely to 19th-century book illustration, organized topically under such headings as “Early Lithography in Britain,” “Lear’s Early Work,” “Pickwick the Periodical,” “A Splash of Colour,” “Chromolithography,” “Art and Ornament,” “The Dalziels and Wood-Engraving,” and “Photography as Art.” Well-annotated examples of Victorian book art are also to be found in Bettley’s chapters on “Illumination,” “Bindings,” and “Children’s Books.”

• Forsythe Paul, Holly. The Sister Arts: Fashioning the Victorian Luxury Book. Toronto: The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, 2023.

  Well-annotated catalogue accompanying a 2023 exhibition at the Fisher Rare Book Library. Section 1 (“Skilled Employment: Including Women in the Book Trades”) includes subsections devoted to illumination manuals, illuminated manuscripts, chromolithographed gift books, and wood-engraved gift books. Section 2 (“Book Arts and the Lady: Readers and Hobbyists”) contains subsections on special bindings, manuals of art and the book arts, ladies’ albums, the language of flowers, annuals, and steel-engraved gift books.

• Janzen Kooistra, Lorraine. Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: The Illustrated Gift Book and Victorian Visual Culture 1855–1875. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2011.

  Janzen Kooistra’s impressive survey of the mid-Victorian gift book in its historical context is illuminating and far-reaching. Kooistra gives close attention to the coordination of multiple book arts in the creation of illustrated gift books, to the relationships between image and text, to markets and readers, and to the economic, political, and cultural conditions that drove gift-books’ publication. She touches on matters of politics, gender, and class that are rare in discussions of the book arts.

• Korey, Marie Elena. Elegant Editions: Aspects of Victorian Book Design. Toronto: The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, 1995.

  Well-annotated catalogue published to accompany an exhibition of books from the Ruari McLean Collection. Contains informative sections on early color printing by relief methods, Henry Shaw and color printing at the Chiswick Press, the color printers Benjamin Fawcett and Edmund Evans, printing from stones, Owen Jones, Henry Noel Humphreys, book arts at the Great Exhibition, and Victorian bookbinding designs. Like McLean 1972 (to which it forms a complement), Korey’s catalogue pays virtually no attention to books published after the 1870s.

• McGann, Jerome. “Herbert Horne’s Diversi Colores (1891): Incarnating the Religion of Beauty.” In The Fin-de-Siècle Poem: English Literary Culture and the 1890s. Edited by Joseph Bristow, 58–77. Ohio University Press, 2005.

  A case study that is also a concise critical and theoretical inquiry into the book arts’ place in both the production and interpretation of poetry. McGann argues that the principal subject of Horne’s 1891 volume is bookmaking’s relation to poetry and that Horne’s volume “makes itself the focus . . . of that larger subject.” McGann shows how Horne took comprehensive control of his book’s expressive features and effectively fashioned an aesthetic manifesto for an art of the total book.

• McKitterick, David. “Changes in the Look of the Book.” In The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Vol. 6, 1830–1914. Edited by David McKitterick, 75–116. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

  A very useful short overview of technological, artistic, and historical changes affecting the Victorian book arts.

• McLean, Ruari. Modern Book Design, from William Morris to the Present Day. London: Faber & Faber, 1958.

  A complementary book to McLean 1972. McLean’s first two chapters give a useful summary of developments in the closing decade of the Victorian period. Later chapters describe the broad influence cast by the late-Victorian book arts over the world of commercial bookmaking in the twentieth century.

• McLean, Ruari. Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing. 2d ed. Berkeley: University California Press, 1972.

  First published in 1963 and significantly revised for its second edition in 1972, McLean’s comprehensive and synthetic survey of the Victorian book arts remains unsurpassed in its breadth. McLean addresses developments in multiple fields including printing, typography, illustration, bookbinding, and illumination, while identifying both technical achievements and artistic highpoints. However, the book comes to an abrupt halt around 1880 and needs to be supplemented by Russell Taylor 1980, Mazur Thomson 2015, and the opening chapters of McLean 1958.

• Mazur Thomson, Ellen. Aesthetic Tracts: Innovation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Book Design. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll, 2015.

  Well-focused analysis of innovation in late-Victorian trade book design. Although Mazur Thomson surveys a fairly narrow range of books and gives short shrift to private presswork, she more than makes up for it in depth of analysis, critical sophistication, and geographical range. She is especially good on the relation between visual and verbal components, devoting an entire chapter to “the writer as book designer” and another to compatibility and conflict between text and image.

• Russell Taylor, John. The Art Nouveau Book in Britain. Reprint. Edinburgh: P. Harris, 1980.

  Gives detailed attention to developments in Britain in the closing two decades of the Victorian period, as well as the opening decades of the twentieth century. While Russell Taylor’s concern with commercially-produced books and art nouveau necessarily constrains his discussion (he is unconcerned with books produced by private presses), he identifies a key strain in late-Victorian trade book design, contextualizing it well in relation to its precursors and subsequent influences. Originally published 1966.

• Twyman, Michael. “The Emergence of the Graphic Book in the Nineteenth Century.” In A Millennium of the Book: Production, Design & Print 900-1900. Edited by Robin Myers and Michael Harris, 135–180. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1994.

  While books incorporating or reliant upon visual imagery were not new, Twyman argues that the pace of change during the nineteenth century warrants us seeing it as the period when what he calls the graphic book emerged. By graphic book, he does not mean simply illustrated books (though he certainly includes these), but rather books that engage the eye as a route to understanding. Twyman’s compact history touches on multiple books arts with learning and insight.