Beyond the Lines

In this wonderfully illustrated book, Joshua Brown shows that the wood engravings in the illustrated newspapers of Gilded Age America were more than a quaint predecessor to our own sophisticated media. As he tells the history and traces the influence of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, with relevant asides to Harper's Weekly, the New York Daily Graphic, and others, Brown recaptures the complexity and richness of pictorial reporting. He finds these images to be significant barometers for gauging how the general public perceived pivotal events and crises-the Civil War, Reconstruction, important labor battles, and more. This book is the best available source on the pictorial riches of Frank Leslie's newspaper and the only study to situate these images fully within the social context of Gilded Age America. Beyond the Lines illuminates the role of illustration in nineteenth-century America and gives us a new look at how the social milieu shaped the practice of illustrated journalism and was in turn shaped by it.
""Beyond the Lines" offers the most imaginative reading I have seen of 19th century visual journalism. The book illuminates in highly original ways how Gilded Age engravers both shaped and reflected popular views regarding race, ethnicity, and labor strife."--Eric Foner, Columbia University
"[A] wonderful study: Brown's narrative is a story, with twists and turns of plot, Dickensian characters and settings, and an equivalently complex set of interwoven themes."--Peter Bacon Hales, "Reviews In American History"