Woodcut illustrations
A woodcut image of a fight scene used in 18th century chapbooksWoodcuts are a type of relief printing technique, where an image is carved onto a dense block of wood and then transferred to the paper once the carved image is covered in ink – this is done with a brayer, a roller that was used by the printer to transfer the ink onto the woodblock. With the invention of printing with moveable type in Europe in the mid-15th century, woodcuts became popular as a visual aid alongside printed text.
Simone Chess notes that woodcut designs were introduced in England as Catholic devotional images, but due to the Protestant Reformation, woodcut manufacturing decreased in the 16th century. However, woodcuts continued to remain common within chapbooks, acting as a selling-point for potential purchasers.
Images were sometimes even bought because of the art that accompanied the texts and Patricia Fumerton found that woodcuts were cut out to decorate ‘the walls of alehouses and homes of the lower orders.’
It was also common for printers to reuse or steal woodblocks from other printers, so for many stories, the woodcut images often do not even match the text they accompany. For example, the fight scene reproduced above is found both in a Youth’s warning piece or, The tragical history of George Barnwell who was undone by a strumpet and the The history of Chevy-chace. Due to the durability and longevity of the woodblock, blocks could be used for many years, making images appear anachronistic in the later years of their use.
My favourite woodcut 
A woodcut image of the masters and mistresses studying the stars with the prince and princess
The tale of the Seven wise mistresses is one of my favourite stories within the collection, because of the woodcut illustrations that accompany the text.
The story itself is a feminine adaptation of the Seven wise masters, and the woodblock images used in this edition are the same as those found in the original.
The illustrations in this piece are striking, and one particularly stands out, depicting the masters and mistresses studying the stars with the prince and princess, to understand whether they should return them back to court.
In this exhibition
- Introduction
- What are chapbooks?
- Who sold and printed chapbooks?
- Chapbook readership
- Woodcut illustrations
- Women and 18th century print
- Female representations in chapbooks
- Further contexts
- Select bibliography