eighteenth-century printers because it cannot be printed simultaneously with the letterpress as can a wood block; but, in spite of this, steel engraving had begun to be very popular in illustrated books.
The whole practice of wood engraving in the early and middle nineteenth century was wrong when it became necessary to employ a crowd of professional draughtsmen on wood. The wood engraver was no longer an artist, and by the loss of his hold upon art, he paved the way for photography which has so successfully displaced him.
One or two facts had a great influence on succeeding developments. The Illustrated London News, founded in 1842, gave an impetus to the wood engraver, and opened up a new field closed to the engraver on metal. This was the beginning of modern illustrated journalism. The early Victorian drawing-room was another factor in the problem. Our forbears loved to decorate their drawing-room tables with a series of sumptuous volumes arranged as the spokes of a cart-wheel. The "Keepsake," the "Book of Beauty," and others of a similar character, embellished with minute steel engravings, were produced to supply this demand. But the wood engraver did not stand idly by and see his art without patron; he strove to compete with the steel engraver, and so it came about that many fine volumes with illustrations printed on india-paper were issued having wood engravings as intricate as steel engravings. An edition of Gray's "Elegy," illustrated by Birket Foster, published in 1854, had wood engravings in imitation of etchings!
