his is the first study in detail of the Dalziel Archive, which consists of some 54,000 wood-engraved images, and has been housed in the British Museum since it was purchased in 1913. The vast collection must have posed an initially daunting prospect for the author, but she has examined it over a number of years and the result is a book that explores this unique collection in a number of interesting ways. It is also the first work on the Dalziel legacy to encompass Victorian illustration in Britain.
The book starts with the founding of the firm in 1839 and finishes in 1893, when it became bankrupt. In the introduction the author discusses the production of the enterprise, looking at collective and anonymous authorship, with wood-engraving as a commercial medium of images as diverse as Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, advertisements for chocolate, scientific subjects, animals and indeed the vast gamut of Victorian visual art. This is, in other words, a scholarly survey which sees the production of the firm as far more than the commercial production of facsimile wood-engraved images. The author goes into prodigious detail and sees the engravers not merely as interpreters of the work of designers but as creative artists in their own right. This is an important and valuable estimation of those whose work, until now, has been often dismissed as secondary and of little significance.
The Dalziel Brothers hid the individual engravers behind their blanket name, and the author has named and identified a number of these largely forgotten practitioners, looking carefully at the images where these names are frequently revealed in the pencil inscriptions that can only be seen on proofs. We learn about the Dalziels as illustrators and archivists, as exemplified by the production of their own archive.
The members of the family are discussed and documented with roles they took in the firm, notably by Margaret Dalziel, who ‘worked very constantly’. She is revealed to have been the centre of the group, and the workshop practice of overnight engraving is explored in detail as the engravers toiled to meet tight deadlines. In order to complete large engravings, the blocks were frequently bolted together at the back and the small blocks distributed among the engravers to produce at speed. This nocturnal activity is shown to have been both tiring and lonely, and it is such detail which makes the book so rewarding. Such aspects have not been so discussed previously and the reader is able to understand what life was like in this working environment.
The division of art labour is discussed in Chapter three, and somewhat tellingly it was Ruskin who saw wood engraving as ‘hands independent of brains’ when he produced his lecture on engraving in Ariadne Florentina (1872). He refers to it as “manual execution” and essentially lower in status than original designers’ work. As noted, one of Stevens’s aims is to raise the position of the wood engraver from manual labourer of facsimiles to creative artist and equal in stature to the guiding artists or draughts people, and there is a fascinating and detailed section which discusses the role of hands themselves in numerous engravings.
Fred Barnard's Sim Tappertit, the 'dissatisfied apprentice' in Dickens's Barnaby Rudge (1841), looks on jealously as Dolly Varden's father shows affection to her (engraved by the Dalziels).
In Chapter 4 apprenticeship, education and employment are dealt with, and there is a discussion of what the author terms ‘Dalziels’ two Barnaby Rudges: the apprentice from 1841 to 1871’. A close reading of the text establishes Sim Tappertit, who is a dissatisfied apprentice, as a rather more significant character than he has been seen previously, and essentially a person who was indentured for seven years and subject to his master in innumerable ways. Stevens sees him as ‘simply ungrateful’, despite benefitting from the 1814 reforms to the apprenticeship system. All of this is valuable and informative, and it shows what a careful reading of the texts can provide when related directly to the work of individual engravers. We learn much about working conditions in the ‘image factory’ which were tough and exacting, and where the freelance engravers were paid ‘not hourly but by square inch’.
The work of Derrida is mentioned, and his philosophical ideas can be viewed to gather up the work in ways that are both detailed and profound. The author notes how the ‘illustration is a parasite. It draws the life and story from the original text to feed its own creative energies’. In this connection there are intriguing images in the archive actually showing parasites in texts about animal husbandry, notably Every Man his own Horse Doctor of 1877, by George Armytage.
'Lady Mason Leaving the Court', Millais' frontispiece to Vol. 2 of Trollope's Orley Farm, 1862 (engraved by the Dalziels).
There is an especially useful section concerning engravers’ signatures in Trollope's Orley Farm (1862), so memorably illustrated by Millais, but the author concentrates on the important contribution of the engravers. There are also numerous false signatures to be discussed, and the often difficult relationships between the engravers and artists. Stevens focuses on Rossetti’s famous complaint (‘Oh Woodman spare that block’) about the Dalziels’ treatment of his designs in The Moxon Tennyson of 1857, and also the difficulties involved in the production of William Allingham’s The Music Master of 1855. This line is pursued in the exploration of other problematic relationships, notably Millais’s exacting insistence on corrections to what the engravers did for his The Finding of Moses in the anthology, Lays of the Holy Land (1857). Close examination of the engraved blocks throughout the book reveals a good deal of new information and conjecture which makes for some dense passages, but it all goes to help our understanding of the complexity of preparing and reworking of the engravings. This leads to a chapter exploring the relationship between the rise of photography and the eventual demise of the firm in 1893.
Designs were frequently photographed onto the blocks and, we learn, the Dalziels for some years saw the advantages of this process in terms of time and convenience for the engravers. Some of these workers acted as intermediary draughtsmen between engraver and photographer and the author has been able to identify the shadowy figures who were significant in the process. Photography enabled the designers’ images to be preserved and not lost in the cutting activity. Also used at the time was electrotyping, which was an electro-chemical method of making a metal replica of the engraved blocks. Lewis Carroll chose electrotyping to be the method for Alice (1865) and in so doing went against the Dalziels’ advice. A further advantage of this system was that many more impressions could be taken, hence sparing blocks that could become worn out; but the impressions were slightly inferior to those taken from wood.
Two of Tenniel's illustrations for Alice in Wonderland (1865), wood engravings by the Dalziels. Right: 'Alice in a sea of tears'. Left: 'Alice and the Dodo'.
Chapter 9 provides an overview of the Dalziels and commercial colour printing, although this was only a relatively small part of their production as it was to prove lengthy and problematic. However, we also see that there is colour to be perceived in black and white illustrations, and this argument makes for a stimulating discussion of the inherent chromatic possibilities offered by various colour blocks, notably red and yellow. Later on there is a useful discussion about the length of time it took to correct mistakes on blocks and how these pressures worked in terms of a method which despite deadlines could not be hurried.
In short, this is a welcome newcomer to the literature on the Dalziels, showing in great detail their domination of Victorian visual culture. It provides ample viewing of the engravers as designers of merit and quality, and this approach puts them firmly in the position of being an integral part of the process of Victorian wood engraved illustration. The Dalziels themselves produced a memoir in 1901, but this is of questionable worth and is frequently inaccurate; Stevens offers a new, and interesting, perspective, and the publication of her book should encourage others to look into their important work.
Bibliography
Stevens, Bethan. The Wood Engravers Self Portrait – The Dalziel Archive and Victorian Illustration. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. 386 pp. £80.00
Last modified 31 July 2007