ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the historical literary precedents that existed in the market for illustrated literature, highlighting the specific and varied genres, such as poetry, travel literature, and the gift-books of the 1820s. The literary marketplace went through a period of dramatic technological development between 1819 and 1833. Both of Scott's publishers in Scotland, Constable and Cadell, were experimenting with, and contributing to, the market for illustrated literature in an attempt to re-brand the Waverley novels for a wider reading audience in the 1820s. Book illustration was an established commercial and artistic medium throughout the eighteenth century, but technological innovation, particularly the development of steel-plate engraving, brought the popular illustrated book into the living rooms of the emerging middle-class. The mechanisation of literary reproduction was only part of the industrial expansion and technological development of Britain's infrastructure during 1836 period.
