Early McLoughlin chromolithographed Cinderella

Building on continued research into the history of children’s books and illustration, as well as her recent blog post, Laura Wasowicz presented her paper “McLoughlin Brothers: Innovators of the Nineteenth-Century Picture Book” using the illustration history of Cinderella as a case study to demonstrate the changes in the technology of color illustration and the consumption of children’s literature.

In the early part of the 19th century, illustrations for children’s books were hand-colored stencils over relief prints produced along with the text, but in 1867 the McLoughlin Brothers produced their first experiment in color using chromolithography. Initially, simply mimicking stencil work but later developing into more standard color illustration processes. Wasowicz showed each development that accompanied McLoughlin’s growing technological capabilities in lithography. Ultimately, she argued that this technological development followed the development of the child as a consumer of literature and demonstrated the growing demand for inexpensive, illustrated, children’s books for entertainment from the more heavily text based and educational materials from previous decades.