Chronicles of progress : the illustrated newspapers of colonial Australia, 1853-1896

This thesis is a study of the imagery in the illustrated newspapers of colonial Australia over the period of their publication, 1853-1896. The distinguishing feature of these papers was that the illustrations were printed from engraved woodblocks. The thesis is pioneering in the sense that whilst historians have regularly used images from the papers to illustrate books on a wide variety of topics, no one has researched the illustrated newspapers as a primary source in their own right. This has led to the thesis also being a study of the printing technology that was associated with producing the papers and how this influenced the range of imagery they contain. It has also involved researching the evolution of illustrated newspapers in colonial Australia. It will be argued that the key to success with the publication of illustrated newspapers in colonial Australia was to change from weekly issue to monthly issue in the early 1860s. Monthly issue was more suited to the demographics of colonial Australia as well as for sending papers to Great Britain by the monthly Royal Mail service. With regard to printing technology, the invention of photographic processes had considerable impact on the production of imagery in the illustrated newspapers. It lead to both the producers and readers of illustrated newspapers gradually reconsidering their ideas about the authenticity of news illustration. This occurred most obviously in terms of the photographer challenging the illustrator with regard to on-the-spot recording of news at a visual level. It also occurred more subtly in terms of photomechanical image reproduction challenging the craft of wood engraving in the faithful reproduction of images regardless of the original medium in which they were produced: photographic print, sketch or oil painting. The argument, in this context, is that in the same way photography confronted art in the nineteenth century in terms of truth to nature, so too did the development of photomechanical processes confront wood engraving in relation to image reproduction. Finally, a content analysis methodology has been used to approach in a systematic way the image subject matter of the papers. Illustrations were then grouped into three brackets: MATERIAL PROGRESS which included imagery of buildings, streetscapes, panoramas, manufacturing, exhibitions and maritime affairs; THE CULTURE OF PROGRESS which was concerned with imagery depicting military affairs, civic occasions, the arts and leisure; and PROGRESS AND THE FRONTIER which comprised imagery relating to the landscape, mining, the wool industry, Aborigines and natural history. The changes in the subject matter of these various categories of imagery reflected very closely the progress of Australia in the second half of the provided their readers with the visual representation of progress in colonial Australia; indeed, they were Chronicles of Progress.