Exactitude and pleasure: late nineteenth-century Australian pictorial atlases and their illustrations

This study examines the use of photography and drawing or painting as the basis for the illustrations of late nineteenth-century Australian pictorial atlases in relation to the generic ideal of pleasurable instruction. Beginning with Australia, Illustrated with Drawings by Skinner Prout, N Chevalier, etc. (2 vols, 1873-76) (hereafter Australia), the production of pictorial atlases burgeoned around the time of the centenary of Australian settlement with the publication of the three- volume Picturesque Atlas of Australasia (1886-88) and the four-volume Cassell's Picturesque Australasia (1889). During this period of rapid technological change in the printing and publishing industries, new possibilities emerged for the production of printed images. While the earlier works employed engravings, in 1897 photographic prints were the sole illustrations used in Glimpses of Australia: An Album of Photographic Gems