The middle decades of the nineteenth century saw an unprecedented growth in the picture industry, with technological advances ensuring that images adorned the pages of books and the walls of Victorian homes.

Panoramic display of evolving styles ranges from hoop-skirted gowns of the mid-1800s to turn-of-the-century fashions that produced diminished bustles and close-fitting skirts. "A superb resource." — History in Review.

The origins of today's popular scrapbooking hobby extend back to the 19th century, when publishers found an enthusiastic market for their colorful chromolithographic images. This reproduction of an authentic scrapbook of 130 years ago reflects Victorian sensibilities and interests. A brief Introduction discusses the hobby's history and all of the images are included on a bonus CD-ROM. 347 images.

The modern media world came into being in the nineteenth century, when machines were harnessed to produce texts and images in unprecedented numbers. In the visual realm, new industrial techniques generated a deluge of affordable pictorial items, mass-printed photographs, posters, cartoons, and illustrations. These alluring objects of the Victorian parlor were miniaturized spectacles that served as portals onto phantasmagoric versions of 'the world.' Although new kinds of pictures transformed everyday life, these ephemeral items have received remarkably little scholarly attention. Picture World shines a welcome new light onto these critically neglected yet fascinating visual objects. They serve as entryways into the nineteenth century's key aesthetic concepts. Each chapter pairs a new type of picture with a foundational keyword in Victorian aesthetics, a familiar term reconceived through the lens of new media. 'Character' appears differently when considered with caricature, in the new comics and cartoons appearing in the mass press in the 1830s; likewise, the book approaches 'realism' through pictorial journalism; 'illustration' via illustrated Bibles; 'sensation' through carte-de-visite portrait photographs; 'the picturesque' by way of stereoscopic views; and 'decadence' through advertising posters. Picture World studies the aesthetic effects of the nineteenth century's media revolution: it uses the relics of a previous era's cultural life to interrogate the Victorian world's most deeply-held values, arriving at insights still relevant in our own media age.

Magnificent collection of rare illustrations, selected from Victorian artist's superb stylebook, depicts 300 black-and-white foliage designs. Based on painted motifs found in woven textiles, woodcarvings, iron- and stonework, the lovely images depict leaves from oak, maple, poppy, ivy, ferns, and thistle, as well as designs incorporating fruits, flowers, and animals.

Tracing the publishing history of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford from its initial 1851-53 serialization in Dickens's Household Words through its numerous editions and adaptations, Recchio focuses especially the text's deployment in support of ideas related to nation and national identity on both sides of the Atlantic. Making extensive use of primary materials, Recchio offers a convincing micro-history of the way English literature was positioned in England and the United States to support an Anglocentric cultural project.

This lavish collection of royalty-free engravings by the celebrated 19th-century artist F. Knight — reproduced directly from a rare original edition — contains elaborate wall murals with trompe-l’oeil effects; scenes of hunters, flanked by mythological figures; idealized damsels in rustic settings; and numerous other florid motifs.