To select a definite moment to start from is not easy, nor to keep rigidly within the time covered by the dates upon the cover of this book. It is necessary to glance briefly at some work issued before 1855, and yet it would be superfluous to re-traverse ground already well covered in _The History of Wood Engraving_, by Chatto and Jackson, with its supplementary chapter by H. G. Bohn (in the 1861 edition), in Mr. W. J. Linton's _Masterpieces of Engraving_, in Mr. Joseph Pennell's two sumptuous editions of _Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen_ (Macmillan), and the same author's _Modern Illustrations_ (Bell), not to mention the many admirable papers read before learned societies by Messrs. W. J. Linton, Comyns Carr, Henry Blackburn, Walter Crane, William Morris, and others. Still less is it necessary to attempt to indorse their arguments in favour of wood-engraving against process, or to repeat those which support the opposite view. So that here, in the majority of cases, the question of the engraver's share has not been considered. Mr. Pennell, for one, has done this most thoroughly, and has put the case for process so strongly, that if any people yet believe a wood-engraving is always something sacred, while a good process block of line work is a mere feeble substitute, there is little hope of convincing them. Here the result has been the chief concern. The object of these notes is not to prove what wood-engraving ruined, or what might or ought to have been, but merely to record what it achieved, without too frequent expression of regret, which nevertheless will intrude as the dominant feeling when you study many of the works executed by even the better class wood-engravers. One must not overlook the very obvious fact that, in the earlier years, an illustration was a much more serious affair for all concerned than it is to-day. In Jackson's _Pictorial Press_ we find the author says: 'Illustration was so seldom used that the preparation of even a small woodcut was of much moment to all concerned. I have heard William Harvey relate that when Whittingham, the well-known printer, wanted a new cut for his Chiswick Press Series, he would write to Harvey and John Thompson, the engraver, appointing a meeting at Chiswick, when printer, designer, and engraver talked over the matter with as much deliberation as if about to produce a costly national monument. And after they had settled all points over a snug supper, the result of their labours was the production a month afterwards of a woodcut measuring perhaps two inches by three. At that time perhaps only a dozen persons besides Bewick were practising the art of wood-engraving in England.'