India in the Illustrated London News 1857-1906

Abstract

Victorian newspapers and periodicals were so important, a contemporary writer declared that journals moulded Englishmen's views "to a far greater extent than they are by those of any personal friend or even any leading statesman." One scholar asserts, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that Victorian journalism was the peculiar means through which the life of this complex period was recorded and through which the whole range of its issues was debated." Unfortunately there has been no scholarly study of the presentation of India based on such British sources. We have selected the Illustrated London News for our study because it was the first popular periodical in the world whose appeal depended primarily on pictures and it was Britain"s first regularly illustrated weekly to direct itself to family reading. The Illustrated London News promised to give its readers news of the world at a time when international coverage was influenced and moulded by social and technological changes in Britain. It promised "to keep continually before the eye of the world a living and moving panorama of all its actions and influences:" Is there peace? then shall its arts, implements, and manufactures be spread upon our page. The literature - the customs - the dress - nay, the institutions and localities of other lands, shall be brought home to you with spirit, with fidelity, and we hope, with discretion and taste. Is there war? then shall its seats and actions be laid naked before the eye. No estafette - no telegraphy - no steam-winged vessel - no overland mail shall bring intelligence to our shores that shall not be in the columns of this journal. The Journal's stress on illustration was innovative and timely, and coincided with the development of photography. Changes in wood engraving and photo-chemical reproduction affected its graphics as it incorporated photographs into its illustrations. In addition to their use in the Journal, illustrations were worked up as separate oil paintings or watercolours and exhibited, published in books, pirated by other periodicals and used in lecture tours. Their exposure and influence extended beyond the Illustrated’s pages. The Illustrated London News was widely imitated and by 1892 both an American edition and an Australian edition were printed...