Text technologies, illustrated editions as multi-technological hybrids, and William Falconer's The Shipwreck, 1762–1808

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the usefulness of text-technological research for book-historically informed literary and textual studies by examining a “multitechnological hybrid” – the illustrated edition featuring copper- and subsequently wood-engraved illustrative plates – and the role it played in mediating William Falconer's maritime georgic, The Shipwreck (Falconer, 1762), from 1762 to 1808. By focusing on the multi-technological hybridity of the visual apparatuses of these editions, issues related to readership and readability, as well as publishing formats and strategies, can be addressed that will facilitate insight into the intermedial reception of Falconer's production. The adoption of different substrates – ranging from copperplates to woodblocks – reflects not only technological innovations but economic factors, including the simplification of production processes as well as the rise of the cheaply produced printed image that would, in the Victorian period, culminate in the 1858 Edinburgh edition of The Shipwreck featuring more than 30 illustrations, as well as numerous decorative devices, by Birket Foster. Above all, it will be demonstrated that publishers utilised specialist bibliographical discourses of materiality that helped potential purchasers to develop a material literacy with which they were able to understand the text-technological encoding of each illustrated edition, including its particular cultural and symbolic value.