{"id":2013,"date":"2020-08-18T16:28:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T16:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=1629"},"modified":"2025-09-21T18:20:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T22:20:34","slug":"lauren-b-hewes-and-kayla-haveles-hopper-eds-radiant-with-color-art-mcloughlin-brothers-and-the-business-of-picture-books-1858-1920-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2020\/08\/18\/lauren-b-hewes-and-kayla-haveles-hopper-eds-radiant-with-color-art-mcloughlin-brothers-and-the-business-of-picture-books-1858-1920-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Lauren B. Hewes and Kayla Haveles Hopper, eds., Radiant with Color & Art<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Lauren B. Hewes and Kayla Haveles Hopper, eds., Radiant with Color & Art<\/em><\/h1>\n\n
\n
\n
August A. Imholtz, Jr.<\/a><\/div>\n\n
in <\/span>Book review<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"Cover<\/a><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Lauren B. Hewes and Kayla Haveles Hopper, eds. Radiant with Color& Art: McLoughlin Brothers and the Business of Picture Books, 1858-1920: December 6, 2017 – February 3, 2018, the Grolier Club, New York.<\/em> Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, [2017]. 144 p. col. ill., maps. ISBN 978-0-692-96711-9.  US$30.00.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the use of\nan exhibition catalog,\u201d Alice might well have said to herself, \u201cif it doesn\u2019t\nhave beautiful pictures and brilliant essays?\u201d This catalog of the McLoughlin\nBrothers\u2019 more than sixty years of publishing children\u2019s books, games, and toys\nsurely would have delighted little Alice. The first third of the book consists\nof three well-written informative essays and the last two thirds make up the\nillustrated exhibition catalog itself. The items were drawn primarily from the\nholdings of the American Antiquarian Society with help from private collectors\nLinda F. and Julian L. Lapides, Richard Cheek, and the George M. Fox Collection\nat the San Francisco Public Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Essays<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the first essay, the exhibition\u2019s co-curator Laura Wasowicz traces the history of the firm beginning with an early partnership between John McLoughlin and Robert Elton to the founding of its successor, McLoughlin Brothers in 1858 by John McLoughlin, Jr. (1827-1905) and Edmund McLoughlin (1833-1889), down to the sale of the company in 1920 to the board games firm of Milton Bradley. From the earliest days John Jr., the real superintendent of the company, marketed its books in numerous series at various price points, different reading levels, and degrees of production quality. McLoughlins became experts in not only relying on classic and new fairy tales but also books about current events, e.g. the Civil War, Buffalo Bill\u2019s Wild West exploration, and the Spanish-American War. The 1867 catalog lists, in addition to its series books and compilation books, paper dolls and \u201ca line of 65 different board and card games\u201d! They employed famous illustrators like Sarah Noble Ives<\/a>, William Bruton<\/a>, Edward P. Cogger<\/a>, Enos Comstock<\/a>, Frances Bassett Comstock<\/a>, and many others. They used powerful steam powered presses, eagerly adopted new technologies (e.g., relief chromotypography, zincography, and chromolithography), acquired competitors (e.g., James Miller), worked with competitors (e.g., D. Appleton & Company for Appleton\u2019s Spanish language books), created a network of salesmen in addition to their mail order and wholesale marketing, and by 1903 employed 850 people in their Brooklyn, New York factory. Finally, the books from McLoughlin Brothers with their brightly colored covers were cheap, costing usually less than half the price of British books as their 1872 catalog boasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the U.S. Copyright Act of 1891, McLoughlin\u2019s pirated numerous British children\u2019s books. In his justifiably vitriolic letter to Scribner\u2019s Monthly <\/em>in September 1877, the British illustrator Walter Crane denounced the unauthorized and bastardized pirating by McLoughlin of his illustrations to his Baby\u2019s Opera<\/em>; and indeed his pre-Raphaelite-like subtle colored  illustrations printed from wood blocks by Sir Edmund Evans were replaced with garish images produced by zinc relief plates. After World War I, however, the third generation of McLoughlins showed little interest in the firm, whose fortunes declined to the point of ending in the sale of the company to Milton Bradley in 1920, a fact which segues nicely into the second essay of the catalog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin G. Schiller,\nin \u201cMcLoughlin Brothers Archives\u2014A Brief Account\u201d traces the dispersal of the\nfirm\u2019s records. The business ledgers and correspondence disappeared early in\nthe 20th<\/sup> century, so Schiller attempted to reconstruct the history\nof the firm from McLouglin\u2019s print archive. That collection was divided in part\nbetween Milton Bradley Company\u2019s treasurer, George Marshall Fox, and its vice\npresident, Charles Miller. A third segment of the archive accompanied the sale\nof what remained of the McLoughlin line to Grosset & Dunlap in 1954.\nSchiller modestly describes his role in securing the transfer to various\nrepositories of some of those parts and today part of the archive is to be\nfound at the American Antiquarian Society. In addition to the sales, for there\nwere several, the dispersal of the thousands of McLoughlin wood blocks is a\nside story in itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the final essay, \u201cCinderella<\/em> Close Up: An Illustration Case\nStudy,\u201d Laura Wasowicz analyzes four different McLoughlin editions of Cinderella<\/em>. The 1852 Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper<\/em>\nused wood blocks from the original design of English engraver John Lewis Marks,\nwhich were then stereotyped, the outlines printed in black, and then hand-colored\nwith, in this case, some careless overlap in the colors, like a child coloring\noutside the lines. The 1863 Cinderella<\/em>\nin the Fairy Moonbeam Series seems to have been a somewhat unsuccessful attempt\nat chromoxylography (printing with woodblocks for each color). Cinderella and the Little Glass Slipper<\/em>,\ncirca 1867, is an example of zincography, using the less-costly zinc plates\nrather than wood engravings. Finally, the 1895 multi-part book Puss in Boots. Cinderella. Red Riding Hood<\/em>\nwas produced by chromolithography in twelve colors, i.e. requiring twelve\npasses through the press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Catalog<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

William Dean Howells\nonce said \u201cthere ain’t anything\nin this world that sells a book like a\npretty cover\u201d and the illustrations (some 90 of the catalog\u2019s 205\nentries have pictures) were ample proof of that dictum in the case of McLoughlin\nBrothers. Many of the catalog entries contain detailed notes, often of several\nparagraphs, on the production, derivation, historical context, and\nbibliographic data of the works exhibited. Like the Grolier exhibition, the\nentries are divided into nine sections, each preceded by a one-page essay, e.g.\n\u201cEarly History of Picture Books in America,\u201d \u201cIllustrators at McLoughlin\nBrothers,\u201d and \u201cThe Golden Age of McLoughlin Brothers.\u201d To take just two items\nas examples, consider first: McLoughlin\u2019s cover of William Cowper\u2019s The Diverting History of John Gilpin<\/em>,\nwhich was pirated from London\u2019s George Routledge & Sons, but is far\nbrighter and attractive than the original British edition. Secondly, Sarah\nNoble Ives brilliantly depicted Cinderella<\/em>\nas a pre-Raphaelite beauty in her watercolor, gouache, and pen-and-ink\nillustration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even a basic catalog\nof McLoughhlin\u2019s output, however, is lacking in large part because of the\ncomplexity and magnitude of the task. McLoughlin regularly repurposed, adapted,\nand manipulated much of its material. Between 1860 and 1890, for example, they\npublished more than 1000 titles in about 150 series. Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em>, for example, exists in 16 different\nseries with more than 30 variations in additional content, cover illustrations,\nand size. Almost all the exhibits in the Grolier Club show were in nearly mint\ncondition, whereas my wife and I, on the contrary, have in our Lewis Carroll\ncollection five McLoughlin Alices,<\/em>\neach of which has some cover soiling, rips in their thin cloth spines, and\nquite apparent overall child wear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McLoughlin\u2019s motto\nwas, \u201cEducate and Amuse,\u201d following Quintilian\u2019s maxim docere [et] delectare<\/em>, although they may have done a bit more of\nthe latter than the former; but McLoughlin Brothers in any event made a\nremarkable contribution to American publishing and life. One small quibble \u2013 a\ntitle and author index would have made the catalog even more useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

August A. Imholtz, Jr., Beltsville, MD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat\u2019s the use of an exhibition catalog,\u201d Alice might well have said to herself, \u201cif it doesn\u2019t have beautiful pictures and brilliant essays?\u201d This catalog of the McLoughlin Brothers\u2019 more than sixty years of publishing children\u2019s books, games, and toys surely would have delighted little Alice. The first third of the book consists of three well-written informative essays and the last two thirds make up the illustrated exhibition catalog itself. The items were drawn primarily from the holdings of the American Antiquarian Society with help from private collectors Linda F. and Julian L. Lapides, Richard Cheek, and the George M. Fox Collection at the San Francisco Public Library. \u261b \u261e<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1630,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-post-template-reviews","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888],"tags":[1896,1897,1913,1942,1953],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-19th-century","tag-20th-century","tag-children-ya","tag-north-america","tag-publishing"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5691,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions\/5691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}