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All of the story papers, as well as the majority of dime novels published before 1880, employed black and white reproduction processes. The story papers were published in newspaper tabloid format and typically have one main, cover illustration. Depending upon the publication, there might be additional images inside the issue. Story papers were occasionally published with a colorful paper wrapper, as in this example from the New York Ledger. These wrappers acted as slip covers for special issues. They were normally reserved for holiday issues such as Easter or Thanksgiving and were illustrated with imagery appropriate to those holidays.
After the illustrator presented the publisher with his finished drawing, the drawing would then be reproduced by one of three black and white printing processes: a relief process known as wood engraving, and two photomechanical processes known as line blocks (a form of etching) and halftone blocks.
The process of wood engraving involves the cutting of an image in relief on a hard, end-grain block of wood with a tool called a burin. The engraver cuts away the parts of the block that correspond to the areas in the drawing which are to remain white or uninked. The uncut, raised area receives the ink when the block is run through the press and thus appears black in the finished print.
How is the illustration transferred to the block? In some cases, the artist drew the illustration on the wood block itself. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, the practice developed of printing a photograph directly onto the block, thus eliminating the need for drawing onto the block.
 Wood engravings: lines can have varying widths which change the lightness or darkness of the illustration. Another thing to look for is small white marks that look like gouge marks where the burin has been used to remove material for a lighter area. |
Fine wood engravings were done by highly skilled craftsmen and would have taken days to accomplish. In the story papers, one finds engravings on the front pages and inside the issues as illustrations for longer stories. For shorter stories or cartoons, a wood engraving would have been too time consuming and costly. In these instances, a second reproduction process was used: a photomechanical process known as a line block (also known as a line cut).
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By the late nineteenth century, a method of etching had developed which took advantage of the advances in photographic processes. This method involved the following steps: first, an artist's line drawing would be photographed. The negative would then be exposed onto a zinc plate covered with light-sensitive gelatin. What once appeared (on the negative) as a black line on a piece of paper now becomes a white line against a black background. The gelatin on the zinc plate is sensitized by the light through the negative in the shape of the line drawing, and the gelatin which has not been sensitized is washed away. The sensitized area is then covered with a wax resist; the rest of the plate is etched, so that the line drawing appears in relief.
 Line blocks: The main distinguishing features for identifying line blocks are the lines themselves. They tend to be of the same thickness, and since line blocks are drawn rather than carved, there are many more curves and angled lines than are possible with engraving. |
The process of stereotyping, patented in France in 1829, consists of making a metal cast of a wood-engraving by means of a mould. Stereotyping was of major importance in the development of wood-engraving because it substituted metal for wood, and metal could be printed in the new machine presses.
Invented roughly a decade later, electrotyping was an advancement on the stereotype and quickly superceded it. The process took longer but it produced a finer quality plate than stereotyping. Used in both the U.S and Great Britain for illustrations, the electrotype was popular in the U.S for text as well.
The process includes the following: first, a mold of wax is impressed on the engraving or line block. The impression in the wax is then coated with an electrically conductive substance such as graphite. This mold is immersed in an electrolytic bath and a copper coating is deposited onto the surface of the coated wax. The wax is then removed and the copper surface is mounted onto plates and used to print the illustrations.
The halftone block is a variation on the line block that allows for
transitions of tone or greyscale. By the turn of the century, the relief
half-tone dominated the illustrations of story papers and dime novels. The
printer could use either a photograph of an artist's drawing or a photograph
itself, and in story papers one finds both, although photographs are less common
than artist's illustrations.
The image is developed from the photographic negative, with a screen placed between the negative and the resulting image. The screen causes the light to be transmitted into dots; the denser the image area is on the negative the smaller the dots will be on the print. Under magnification, a relief half-tone looks like a series of dots which are larger and more dense in dark areas and smaller or non-existent in light areas.
| Relief halftones from drawings: this relief halftone began as a photograph of an pen and ink work. It appears to have subtle gradations of gray, but upon magnification it becomes apparent that the image is composed of dots. |
Relief halftones from photographs: this image is from a photograph rather than a drawing, yet the reproduction process is similar enough that upon magnification it looks much the same. |
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The halftone relief process effectively eliminated the need for highly skilled wood-engravers. The impact on line blocks was less radical as the photomechanical means by which they were being reproduced was relatively cheap, and they were still used for cartoons and smaller illustrations into the twentieth century. There was a transition period in the 1890's where all three forms of reproduction appear in story papers, but as time went on wood engravings disappear.
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