"Illustration of a Picture": Nineteenth-Century Writers and the Philadelphia Pictorials

On April 6, 1839, writer Joseph H. Ingraham wrote this to Philadelphia publisher Edward Carey: "I have forwarded to you … the MS [sic] of the tale written by me, at your request, to illustrate the painting by Mount, which I saw at your residence when in Philadelphia." Carey published, among other literary matter, the popular annual, the Gift, for which Ingraham sent along his manuscript. Ingraham's letter highlights the practice of mid-century publishers of first commissioning engravings for the illustrated periodicals, and then soliciting popular writers to contribute literary matter to explicate the engravings. Ingraham continues: "I trust it will serve in some measure to illustrate your own idea of the painting. It is, you are doubtless aware, one of the most difficult parts of authorship to write to a painting … and the chances are ten to one for a failure on his part who attempts it."¹

Ingraham may have found the task of illustrating an engraving difficult, but the difficulty did not deter a great many writers in the mid nineteenth century from attempting it. Correspondences between authors and editors, as well as evidence from periodicals themselves, clearly demonstrate that the practice of commissioning an engraving before soliciting an accompanying textual "illustration" was widespread during the 1840s, the hey-day of the illustrated monthly magazines and annuals.²

In fact, most of the popular authors contributing original poetry and short fiction to the illustrated periodicals composed at least a few of their pieces specifically on commission to illustrate an engraving. Male authors who contributed textual illustrations included T. S. Arthur, Henry William Herbert ("Frank Forester"), Charles Fenno Hoffman, Joseph Ingraham, Park Benjamin, Epes Sargent, Jr., Seba Smith, and Henry T. Tuckerman. Popular women writers who also contributed textual illustrations included Caroline H. Butler, Elizabeth F. Ellet, Emma C. Embury, Sarah Josepha Hale, Caroline Kirkland, Frances S. Osgood, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, and Elizabeth Oakes Smith.

The publishers of the middlebrow monthly magazines that came to prominence in the 1840s—especially the Philadelphia pictorials such as Godey's, Graham's, Peterson's, and Sartain's Union—promoted their periodicals as magazines of "art and literature." Louis Godey, George Graham, Charles Peterson and John Sartain competed to secure the services of the best authors, artists, and engravers in Philadelphia, in this decade the center of the nation's burgeoning print industry. Collectively, the Philadelphia periodicals boasted larger circulations than those of similar publications from any other city in this decade, including New York, Boston, Baltimore, and New Orleans (Mott, 1:578). The full-page engravings commissioned for each monthly issue were inserted at the front of the magazine, and were designed for pull-out and framing. In fact, Godey once boasted that an enterprising reader had cut out the fashion plates and sold them for more than the entire number cost him (Mott, 1:520).

In this article, I will argue that illustrating an engraving served as one nexus in a complex web of literary sociability and exchange that also included literary salons and societies; anthologizing; and editorial "puffing," among others.³ For an author, agreeing to illustrate an engraving frequently served to launch a new career, cement a literary friendship, or forge a possible publishing alliance for future work. For an editor or publisher, commissioning a written illustration could serve to placate a reader-contributor longing to see his/her name in print, assist a needy literary widow, or reward a reliable second- or third-tier writer with additional work. This article begins by fleshing out the historical context for this practice. I then examine manuscript evidence from several writers whose contributions of textual illustrations are particularly well documented, and speculate about the gendering of this literary genre. Finally, I will use the work of Henry William Herbert and Caroline Kirkland as brief case studies to illustrate how male and female authors used this practice to their own ends.

"Do Not Call Them Illustrations"

Periodicals historian Frank Luther Mott pointed to the centrality of engraved "embellishments" to illustrated magazines in his extended sketch of Godey's Lady's Book: "Do not...