Existing comment:
Illustrated News Publications:
At the start of the Civil War, the major illustrated news publications -- Harper's Weekly, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, and the New York Illustrated News -- were all northern enterprises engaged in telling their side of the war. The South had no comparable news organ until September 1862, when E.W. Ayers and W.H. Wade of Richmond began publishing the Southern Illustrated News. Because paper, ink, and printing presses were just a few of the South's many scarcities, editors scrambled to produce weekly editions of the paper. Foremost was the challenge of finding good engravers to carve the illustrations into blocks of wood, which were then inked and printed on paper. The news pages on display here represent the papers of Ayres and Wade and of Frank Leslie. |