ABSTRACT
The common medium of book illustration in the eighteenth century was copperplate engraving—in Thomas Rowlandson’s case, etching. Customarily two artists were engaged in the making of an illustrative plate: the designer; and the engraver. The illustration itself was of course credited to the designer. At the beginning of the eighteenth century George Vertue was the distinguished English engraver, working largely on portraiture. By the mid-century, French illustrative styling had already begun to displace the English. In France, book illustration was in the eighteenth century more common and more voguish than in England. A great fillip was given to the illustration of fiction when The Novelist’s Magazine began in 1780 a series of reprints of both English and foreign fiction. Thomas Rowlandson’s illustrations are in a class altogether their own, in their faultless discernment of the inevitable incident, in their vitality, and in their unquestionable artistic distinction.
