ABSTRACT
The conclusion discusses how a transnational perspective fundamentally changes our understanding of nineteenth-century illustrated newspapers and visual news culture and, more generally, the prevailing national focus of media historical research. It shows that illustrations of the news indeed spoke, as the Illustrated London News claimed in 1851, a ‘universal language’. The conclusion also reflects on two central themes that run through the book: the importance of personal connections between publishers, artists, and engravers for the shape of the transnational trade in illustrations and the tension between the legal and illegal, or the controlled and uncontrolled trade in images.
