European Illustrated Press and the Emergence of a Transnational Visual Culture of the News 1842-1870

This book looks at the roots of a global visual news culture: the trade in illustrations of the news between European illustrated newspapers in the mid-nineteenth century. In the age of nationalism we might suspect these publications to be filled with nationally produced content supporting a national imagined community. However the large-scale transnational trade in illustrations which this book uncovers points out that nineteenth-century news consumers already looked at the same world. By exchanging images European illustrated newspapers provided them with a shared transnational experience.