ILN 

The Illustrated London News was first issued on 14 May 1842; founded by Herbert Ingram it remained in the family until the 1960's when it became part of the Thompson organisation. As indicated by its title it made extensive use of illustrations

Illustrations in early issues are printed from wooden blocks - the larger engravings, some of which occupied a double page spread, were built from smaller blocks clamped together. A group of engravers would cut these blocks, once clamped they would be completed to hide the joins (the largest IoM-related views were single sheet size though most were smaller). Later in the century it became possible to print directly from photographic blocks. Ingram installed the latest technology of the age but the large rotary presses could not easily handle illustrations thus a two stage process was employed in which the rotary press printed a text-only side of a page and then a slower flat bed press was used for those sides with illustrations.

English competitors included Penny Illustrated Paper (from 1861), the Graphic (from 1869) and the Pictorial World (from 1874). Initial print runs were of 26,000 but increased to 60,000 by the end of 1842; the Great Exhibition of 1851 boosted circulation to 130,000 copies per week and following the abolition of advertisement duty and other taxes on newspapers it achieved a circulation of 200,000 by the late 1850's.

The following list of articles relates to the Isle of Man [based on that in Cubbon but with some additions and corrections]. (In some cases I have only the blocks as the text being on a different page was possibly on the obverse of another block - dealers tend to sell the blocks as the text is not considered important)-

References

W.B.Orme The Illustrated London News Book and Magazine Collector #7 Sept 1984 pp25/35

 

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