864
Talbot published a letter announcing his discoveries on
8 February 1841. Talbot went on to send several letters
recording the way that he had discovered his new pro-
cess. He also used the Literary Gazette to communicate
new developments to a wider audience. In the edition of
10 July 1841, for example, Talbot sent a letter that he
had received from Dr Schafhaeutl, in Munich, detailing
advances in photography “which, it is to be regretted,
are little known in England.”
The important role of the Literary Gazette in popula-
rising photography is particularly evident in its export to
America. After reading a copy of the periodical that had
been transported to New York, Dr John William Draper,
a friend of Samuel Morse, constructed one of fi rst
American Daguerreotype cameras in September 1839.
During the 1850s, the Literary Gazette’s coverage of
photography was reduced to only intermittent reviews of
the various photographic exhibitions. Its declining com-
mercial fortunes meant that it fi nally ceased publication
on 26 April 1862.
John Plunkett
See also: Brewster, Sir David; Talbot, William Henry
Fox; Claudet, Antoine-François-Jean; Bauer, Francis;
Arago, François Jean Dominique; Daguerre, Louis-
Jacques-Mandé; Calotype and Talbotype; Draper,
John William; and Morse, Samuel Finley Breese.
Further Reading
Bourne, Henry Fox, English Newspapers. Chapters in the History
of Journalism, London: Chatto and Windus, 1887.
Duncan Robert, “The Literary Gazette,” British Literary Maga-
zines: The Romantic Age 1789–1836, ed. Alvin Sullivan,
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983: 242–247.
Gernsheim, Helmut, and Alison Gernsheim, The History of Pho-
tography; From the camera obscura to the beginning of the
modern era, 1955; London: Thames and Hudson, 1969.
Jerdan, William. The Autobiography of William Jerdan, London:
Arthur Hall and Virtue, 1852.
Mitchell’s Newspaper Press Directory (London, 1846).
Pyle, G.J. Junior, The Literary Gazette Under William Jerdan,
Unpublished PhD, Duke University, 1976.
“The Literary Gazette,” The Waterloo Directory of English News-
paper and Periodicals, ed. John North, vol. 4, Waterloo: North
Waterloo Academic Press, 1997: 2915–2917.
LITHOGRAPHY
Alois Senefelder (1771–1834), an Austrian actor and
playwright, announced his planographic printing
process of lithography in 1798. Lithography formed a
major component of the revolution in print media that
took place during the fi rst half of the 19th century. By
the 1840s lithography became widespread and in London,
lithographic printing houses began to outnumber those of
copper- and steel-plate printers.
Lithography had several advantages over relief and
intaglio processes since the printmaker no longer needed
to carve, scrape or dot a design onto the plate but could
draw or paint it in a greasy substance on a porous printing
surface, usually stone. It was a highly versatile process
since a wide variety of drawing media could be used to
produce the image, including chalk, crayon and pen and
wash. Another feature of lithography was that it could in
some respects mimic intaglio processes.
Lithography was to act as a primary building block
to the photographic processes of Niépce, Daguerre, and
Talbot and, in the form of a number of ‘hybrid’ processes,
heralded photomechanical reproduction. However, while
the inventors of photolithographic processes have received
attention from historians, the history of photolithographic
printers themselves remains largely unwritten.
A lithographic printing plate could be produced far
more quickly than could those of traditional processes.
This speed became even more advantageous when
coupled with the acceleration in manufacture introduced
in the early nineteenth century by the new mechanical
printing presses. Furthermore, the lithographic stone
could produce a very large number of impressions, which
again brought considerable economic benefi ts as did the
fact that, unlike steel and wood engraving, stones could
be easily re-used. These were the prerequisites for mass
production and for low unit costs, and they were to be
central to the ultimate success of photography. As such
they help explain why lithography and photography were
such suitable and effective partners.
The introduction of photolithographic processes
in the 1850s was the result of research initiated by
Nicephore Niépce (1765–1833) and advanced by,
amongst others, commercial lithographers and printers.
Rose-Joseph Lemercier (1803–1887) had already been
experimenting with combinations of photography and
lithography since at least 1848. Together with Louis-
Alphonse Davanne (1824–1912), Noël-Marie Paymal
Lerebours (1807–1873), and Charles-Louis-Arthur
Barreswil (1817–1870) Lemercier developed a plano-
graphic photolithographic process (lithophotographie)
which was deposited with the Académie des sciences
on 28 June 1852. In this photolithographic process a
grained lithographic stone was coated with a solution
of bitumen of Judea and ether, contact-printed with
the original and then developed with ether. In 1854 six
photographic views of French medieval churches by
Henri Le Secq were published by this photolithographic
process. However, in 1857 Lemercier abandoned this
process, which could pull only a limited number of
proofs, and purchased and comparatively success-
fully used the process invented by one of the most
signifi cant fi gures in the history of photomechanical
reproduction, the French chemical engineer Alphonse
Poitevin (1819–1882) whose process could provide
up to 700 impressions from one stone. In 1855 had