Wood Engraving and the Future of Word-Image Narratives: The Dalziel Family, 1839-1893

达尔齐尔兄弟（Dalziel Brothers）是19世纪英国最大的木版画公司，他们的49本画册中有54000幅版画，这是维多利亚时代文化中备受喜爱的一个方面的非凡资源。它包括版画家为刘易斯·卡罗尔（Lewis Carroll）的《爱丽丝梦游仙境》（Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland）（1865年，图1）绘制的插图，以及为丁尼生（Tennyson）的《玛丽安娜》（Mariana）和《夏洛特夫人》（the Lady of charlotte）（1857年，图2）绘制的拉斐尔前派插图，这些都是对视觉和文学文化非常重要的对象。尽管他们取得了巨大的成就，但从来没有对达尔齐尔犬进行过全面的研究。相反，学者们倾向于关注图像的设计者，即在雕刻石块之前先用铅笔画草图的艺术家：对于上面提到的插图，他们是约翰·坦尼尔（John Tenniel）、但丁·加布里埃尔·罗塞蒂（Dante Gabriel Rossetti）和约翰·埃弗雷特·米勒（John Everett Millais）。这个项目调查了Dalziels和他们的委托和雕刻艺术作品的根本合作方法。调查询问了达尔齐尔夫妇是谁，调查了女性家庭成员和匿名员工很少被承认的贡献。达尔齐尔家族在历史的关键时刻拥有巨大的文化影响力，作为英国最大的印刷图像出版商——从狄更斯和特罗洛普的插图到软体动物和小牛胎儿的科学图像（图7），以及肥皂或可可的广告。这是一个木刻是无处不在的技术的时代。木版画发明于19世纪初，不同于早期的木刻；在黄杨木（一种非常坚硬的木材）上切割，并使用端纹而不是木板，它能够提供更精细的细节，因此它可以在技术上与铜和钢雕刻竞争。它的印刷成本也要低得多。与当时已知的其他视觉媒介不同，木版画能够将非凡的细节与廉价的大规模生产相结合（在20世纪的大部分时间里，摄影术过于昂贵而无法广泛使用）。我的项目调查了达尔齐尔家族在这个行业的领导地位，以及他们文化影响的本质。我的主要研究资料是达尔齐尔档案。收藏于大英博物馆，这个重要但很少使用的资源，有从1839年到1893年收集的所有达尔齐尔图像的证据印象。作为雕刻家的样稿，它们印刷得很仔细，通常比出版的样稿还要精细。这些相册的视觉质量令人惊叹，不仅是上面提到的著名亮点，还有许多从未展出过的令人惊叹的版画。例如，档案中包括一幅引人注目的插图，“利斯巴”（1857年，图3），由达尔齐尔夫妇在坦尼尔之后雕刻而成。这幅画描绘了一位《旧约》中失去亲人的母亲，她憔悴的脸焕发出光彩，从哥特式的风景中凄凉地盯着观众。自制作以来，我第一次展示和解释这样的图像，我将提供一个急需的木刻说明，探索其技术和美学。我还将对我们对文本和插图如何相互关联的理论理解进行新的干预。这个为期两年的项目投资于我的职业发展，以及这个重要的新研究领域。它将使我发展作为一个研究领导者的重要技能，第一次与多个合作者管理一个跨学科项目。我将出版一本专著，探索达尔齐尔家族，以及19世纪及以后书籍插图的阅读和使用方式。我将在大英博物馆策划一个展览，探讨同样的主题。会议将允许共享研究，汇集不同的知识观点。大英博物馆将在其网站上发布一份附有插图的在线目录，这将使达尔齐尔夫妇的作品首次公开。最后，我将领导一系列开放的批判性和创造性研讨会，向新的观众介绍达尔齐尔夫妇，并推广回应他们艺术的新方式。

The Dalziel Brothers were the largest 19th-century wood engraving firm in Britain, and their archive of 54,000 prints in 49 albums is a phenomenal resource for a well loved aspect of Victorian culture. It includes the printmakers' proofs of the illustrations to Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' (1865, fig. 1), as well as the Pre-Raphaelite illustrations to Tennyson's 'Mariana' and 'The Lady of Shalott' (1857, fig. 2), objects of immense importance to visual and literary culture. Despite their huge achievements, there has never been a full-length study of the Dalziels. Instead, scholars tend to focus on the designers of the images, artists who made the preparatory pencil drawings before the blocks were engraved: for the illustrations mentioned above, John Tenniel, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. This project investigates the Dalziels and their radically collaborative methods of commissioning and engraving works of art. It asks who the Dalziels were, examining the little acknowledged contributions of women family-members and anonymous employees. The Dalziels had great cultural power at a key moment in history, as Britain's largest publishers of printed images - everything from Dickens and Trollope illustrations to scientific images of molluscs and calf foetuses (fig. 7), and adverts for soap or cocoa. This was a time when wood engraving was the ubiquitous technique. Invented in the early 19th century, wood engraving was different from the earlier woodcut; cut on boxwood (an extremely hard wood), and using the endgrain rather than plank, it was capable of much finer detail, so that it could compete technically with copper and steel engravings. It was also far cheaper to print. Like no other visual medium then known, wood engraving was capable of extraordinary detail combined with cheap mass production (for most of the century photography was too expensive for widespread use). My project investigates the role of the Dalziels at the head of this industry, and the nature of their cultural influence.My primary research material is the Dalziel Archive. Held in the British Museum, this vital but scarcely used resource has proof impressions of all Dalziel images, collected in albums from 1839 to 1893. As engravers' proofs, they were printed with care, often finer than published impressions. The albums are astonishing for the visual qualities, not only of the famous highlights mentioned above, but of many stunning prints never before exhibited. For example, the archive includes an arresting illustration, 'Rizpah' (1857, fig. 3), engraved by the Dalziels after Tenniel. It shows a bereaved mother from the Old Testament, her haggard face brilliantly lit, who stares bleakly at at the viewer from a gothic landscape. Exhibiting and interpreting images like this for the first time since they were produced, I will offer a much-needed account of wood engraving that explores its techniques and aesthetic. I will also make a new intervention in our theoretical understanding of how text and illustrations relate to one another.This two-year project invests in my career development, as well as in this important new research area. It will enable me to develop vital skills as a research leader, managing an interdisciplinary project with multiple collaborators for the first time. I will publish a monograph exploring the Dalziel family, and the way book illustrations were read and used in the 19th century and beyond. I will curate a display in the British Museum which explores the same themes. A conference will allow for shared research, bringing together different intellectual perspectives. An illustrated, online catalogue, to be published on the British Museum's website, will make the Dalziels' work accessible for this first time. Finally, I will lead a series of open critical and creative workshops that will introduce the Dalziels to new audiences and promote new ways of responding to their art.