Guideline Through the Interwoven Histories of
Radical Culture & Relief Printing
A Commented Bibliography of the Institute's Relevant Possessions


W. J. Linton:
Poems, Pamphlets, Illustrations, Editorial-Work and Graver-Work

ed. W. J. Linton, The National:
a Library for the People, London 1839
Bound volume of the short-lived radical magazine, published in the founding year of Chartism, the first organized labour movement, by James Watson, one of its initial members, a famous contender for the freedom of the press. The title of the periodical was a central republican term. The notion „national“ in the first decades of the 19th century was rather connected to emancipatory than to jingoistic ideals. The subtitle reflects the enthusiasm for education of the widely self-taught circles of Chartist activists, which mainly consisted of artisans and workers. Nearly all articles of the magazine are in the tradition of radical „bricolage“ by the editor Linton himself, also the praeimpressionistic illustrations which show him as a contemporary of the School of Barbizon. An emphatic worshipping of nature was a main aesthectic signature of the „generation 48“. The site of wild, primordial nature corresponded with their anti-hierarchic Rousseauean egalistic ideals as well as single images like the tree or the stormy sea were already fraught with revolutionary meaning and held codes from the time of the first French Revolution. This whole aesthetic attitude was in accordance with radical political ideals that referred to the natural, pre-industrial state of a „moral economy.“ - The expressiveness of Linton’s engravings has no parallel in the xylography of its time.)

- (a.k.a. “The editor of the National“), Life of Thomas Paine, London 1839 / New York 1892
A late edition of Linton’s first book publication. From the very start, he demonstrated his relatedness to Republican ideals on which both the American and French revolutions where based.)

Ingram, Herbert, ed. The Illustrated London News.
Early Volumes: 1842 I - 1846 I +II – 1847 II
(Between January 1843 and the end of 1847 the workshop of Linton and his partner John Orrin executed a great part of the engravings of this first Illustrated Magazine with topics of everyday politics. Linton also regularly contributed drawings. The founding of „The Illustrated London News“ was inspired by the pictorial concept of the radical satire magazine „Punch“, which started one year ealier.)

The Illuminated Magazine, London 1843 - 1845
Vol. I-III ed. Douglas Jerrold / Vol. IV ed. W.J. Linton
(Linton had close connections to most of the founding members of the satirical “Punch“ magazine and had been involved in their numerous conflicts over politics. Following his friend, the radical journalist and critic Douglas Jerrold, he became editor of the short-lived radical side project of the „Punch“ staff, „The Illuminated Magazine“.)

-,ed. , The Illuminated Magazine.
[New series, Nos. I-II), May – June 1845
(Though it immediately followed the four bulky quartos of the first series, the very rare diminutive second series differs markedly from its predecessor as it is mainly without illustrations. Contributors were mostly anonymous, but included influential journalists and radical novelists like James Smith, Charles Whitehead, and Angus Reach, as well as a poem by the legendary Charles Jeremiah Wells whose writings were then rediscovered by the Brotherhood of the Pre-Raphaelites.)

-, Bob - Thin or Poorhouse Fugitive, London 1847
(One of the few existing copies of Lsinton’s groundbreaking social poem in which he accuses the afflictions caused by the inhuman legislation for the poor. He responds to William Blake’s concept of the „Illuminated Books“ by establishing a new kind of multi-layered, storyboard-like pictorial comment. The drawings for the visual comments of each of the four chapters were executed by different artists. Besides Linton himself, his keen friends William Bell Scott, Edward Duncan and Thomas Sibson were involved. Signed by the author.)

Lovett, Mary & William ed., Howitt´s Journal, (3 Vol.) 1847-48
(The short-lived socio-cultural magazine was published by the legendary William Lovett, one of the founders and main forces of the Chartist movement. The editing poet couple Howitt had lived for some years in Germany; their articles provide an intimate insight in the revolutionary atmosphere of German intellectual circles of the so-called Vormärz. The main contributors of illustrations were Linton and his disciple Alfred Harrall, who later was to become one of the most prolific engravers and illustrators of “Graphic” magazine. As it had been the case in a preceding periodical of William Howitt named “People’s Journal,” Lintons engagement exceeded mere illustration by far. He seems to have been suggesting illustrated articles on his two main artistic role models: Thomas Bewick and William Blake. Whereas Bewick was very popular as the godfather of the huge wood engraving wave of the 19th century, Blake at that time held a position as an “artist´s artist”, one who was only known to a small circle of admirers.)

W.J. Linton ed., The English Republic, London 1851-55
(Reprint of the abridged versioned of 1891, ed. by Kineton Parkes, London 2007)
(As with his first magazines, this radical monthly was also a one-man enterprise. Linton was the author of all its articles, poems and illustrations. Like his former and all his coming magazine projects – altogether he had been the responsible editor of ten periodicals - it ended in bankruptcy.)

-, Thirty Pictures by deceased British Artists engraved expressly for the Art Union of London by W. J. Linton, London 1860
(A very convincing document of Linton’s artistry of reproduction engraving that was highly esteemed by leading artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement; includes also a design by the then widely unknown Blake.)

Gilchrist, Alexander, Life of William Blake, "Pictor Ignotus"
(2 volumes), London 1863
(First edition. Linton was responsible for the pictorial selection of this influential biography, that rescued its subject from almost obscurity and made it accesible to a broader audience. Most of Blakes paintings were redrawn and appear as free Lintonean interpretations. Blake´s drawings were reproduced in kenography, a relief printing technique that Linton had invented especially for the transfer of line drawings.)

Linton, Eliza Lynn, The Lake Country, London 1864
(Deeply frustrated by the political and cultural developements after the failure of the European revolutions, Linton retreated with his family in 1852 from London to the Lake Country. When he emigrated to the States a decade later, he sold his cottage in Brantwood to John Ruskin, the famous Christian socialist and mastermind of the Arts & Crafts movement. The monography on the Lake Country was written by Linton’s wife Eliza Lynn, famous author of Victorian novels, and includes outstanding landscape drawings by Linton himself.)

- , The Ferns of the English Lake Country , London 1865
(An astonishing document of Linton’s botanical interests.)

-, Claribel and Other Poems, London 1865
(Illustrated by the author.)

Wise, John R.,The New Forest: Its History and its Scenery, London 1867
(Includes the first printed illustrations of Walter Crane, engraved by his teacher Linton.)

Frank Leslie´s Illustrated Newspaper, 1867
(Shortly after his emigration to America in 1866, Linton became art director of this wide-spread American illustrated Weekly and was responsible for the engraving department.)

-, The Flower and the Star and other Stories for Children,
Boston 1868
(Linton’s interpretation of four fairy tales with amazing illustrations in which he fuses minute nature observations with fantastic elements.)

-, The House that Tweed built, New Haven 1871
(A first publication of Linton’s „Appledore Press“, which he founded in his rural place of retreat in New Haven, Connecticut; a prolific and influential private press venture more than twenty years before William Morris promoted the huge wave of artists’ presses and books. Lintons pictorial pamphlet against the corruption of American Politics refers to the early broadsheet tradition of British radical satire as well as to the prominent cartoon campaigns of Thomas Nast.)

Scott, William Bell / Linton, W.J. (Illu.), Half Hour Lectures on the History and Practice of the fine and ornamental Arts,
London 1874
(The Scottish Pre-Raphaelite painter, engraver and poet was among Linton’s life-long friends.)

-, Famine: a Masque, New Haven 1875
(The title page design – especially the eccentric lettering – of Linton’s Blakean short play against the English oppression of Ireland is regarded as an early precursor of Art Nouveau style, and, as Linton’s biographer F.B. Smith suggests, it may have influenced it directly by his pupils.)

Longfellow, Henry W., The Hanging of the Crane, Boston 1876
(Illustrations engraved by Linton.)

-, Catoninetales, London 1877 /1891 (aka Hattie Brown)
(An illustrated pamphlet in nursery rhymes directed against racist tendencies in the phase of the American Reconstruction. The best example of Linton’s catchy multi-referential cartooning style.)

- ed., Poetry of America, Selections from One Hundred American Poets from 1776 to 1876: With an Introductory Review of Colonial Poetry, and Some Specimens of Negro Melody,
London 1878
(A very forward-looking anthology of American poems with an engraved portrait of Linton’s friend Walt Whitman as frontispice.)

Bryant, William Cullen, The Flood of Years / Thanatopsis
(2 volumes), New York 1878
(These illustrations include some of Linton’s most impressing visionary designs and mark a peak of the art of xylography at the end of the century.)

-, Some practical Hints on Wood Engraving, New Haven 1879
(A biting polemic against the elaborate photorealism of the so-called „American New School of Wood-Engraving“, which he called „slavish“. He opted for overcoming purely technical refinement and for going back to the „roots“ of the technique. The engraver’s work should always be a creative act in its own right; in a newspaper article in 1878 he argued that, to him, even photogaphy is art an whenever it shows „evidence of an artistic spirit“.)

-, James Watson: A Memoir of the Days of the Fight for a Free Press in England and the Agitation for the Peoples Charter, Manchester 1880
(Linton’s biography of his former publisher, who played a leading role in the Chartist movement)

- ed., Golden Apples of Hesperus (Poems not in the Collections), New Haven 1882
(Signed and numbered copy of this selection of Lintonean Poetry.)

-ed., Rare Poems of the 16th and 17th Century, Boston, 1882
(Anthology of British poems)

- , The History of Wood Engraving in America, Boston, 1882
(Signed and numbered copy; displays the development of American xylography, beginning with its initial practitioner Alexander Anderson, a follower of Bewick; includes repeated attacks on the „New School of Wood-Engraving.)

-, Nancy Carlson Schrock ed., American Wood Engraving,
a Victorian History by William James Linton, New York,1882
(Annotated reprint of the edition of 1887 with unsatisfying reproduction quality)

- Wood- Engraving. A Manual of Instruction, New Haven, 1884

-, Poems and Translations, New York 1889

Linton, W.J., The Masters of Wood Engraving,
New Haven / London, 1889
(Signed and numbered copy of this substantial illustrated history of relief printing techniques. It is usually regarded as Linton’s editorial masterpiece: He wrote the text, cut he blocks for page-plates and other illustrations, and set the 229 folio pages and over 200 photographic blocks himself. Many of the reproductions of the xylographic images were printed on Japan paper from electrotypes of the original blocks.)

-, The Religion of Organization. An Essay read to Friends in Boston, New Haven 1892
(A typical example of Linton’s prolific pamphlet production.)

-, Life of John Greenleaf Whittier, London 1893
(Biography of the famous American abolitionist and poet)

-, European Republics. Recollections of Mazzini and his Friends. London 1893
(Linton had been one of the main networkers of the Chartist Movement. He was closely connected to some of the European protagonists of the 1848 revolution, among them Mazzini, Kossuth and Herzen. After the failure of the insurgencies, he provided asylum for whole groups of refugees, at first in London, later in New York.)

-, Threescore and Ten Years, 1820 to 1890. Recollections,
New York, 1894
(His autobiography. Includes lots of unconnected chat, but less facts.)

-, Love-Lore and other, early and late Poems, New Haven 1895
(Includes a hand-written dedication and an original embedded letter by Linton. The microscopic detailled headpieces are of amazing beauty and far beyond the ornamental stereotypes that Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau put forth.)

Smith, Francis Barrymore, Radical Artisan. W. J. Linton 1812-97, Manchester 1973
(Biography of Linton by a scholar of the Chartist Movement. Focuses less on Linton’s art but on his life-long political networking. Includes a comprehensive bibliography and an appendix with excerpts from Kineton Park’s edition of „The English Republic“ )