Review of Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America by Joshua Brown

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (Frank Leslie’s) told millions of stories in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  In Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America, Joshua Brown explores the images produced by Frank Leslie’s and the manner in which they were constituted “by a complicated social negotiation among artists, editors, engravers, and readers.”  Brown’s careful analysis of these images, set in the context of the times in which they were produced, provides a glimpse into the changing face of America from the founding of Frank Leslie’s in 1855 to its eventual sale by the Leslie family in 1889.

Frank Leslie’s began publication in the turbulent years leading up to the American Civil War.  In exploring the first decade of the newspaper’s existence, Brown focuses on both the technology involved in the publication as well as on the stories covered by Frank Leslie’s.  From the entry of Frank Leslie’s onto the publishing scene, technological advancements paved the way for the newspaper’s success.  The transition from rag to wood pulp paper and the invention of the steam printing press lowered costs, making newspapers more affordable for a general public that was simultaneously becoming more literate.  At the same time, advances in communication, such as the spread of the telegraph and the completion of the transatlantic cable, provided quicker access to news from around the nation and the wider world.   With this new technology, Frank Leslie’s published its illustrations and accompanying narrative at a time when the United States was enduring the political turmoil that would see the nation first ripped apart and then awkwardly reconciled.  In these initial years of publication, Brown demonstrates that Frank Leslie’s walked a fine line amongst its readers, striving to meet the needs of both its Northern and Southern audiences.  In addition to its coverage of national politics, the newspaper stepped cautiously into reform movements, achieving its greatest success in its coverage of the “swill milk” campaign of 1858-1859.

The work of this first decade set the tone for the post-bellum publication of Frank Leslie’s, even as it meant that much of the content of the newspaper and its illustrations would necessarily change.  Technological advancements in engraving and continued improvements in both the publishing and communication industries kept Frank Leslie’s affordable and available to its audiences.  But, just as Frank Leslie’s had walked the line between Northern and Southern sentiment before the War, it once again found itself struggling to meet the needs of its diverse readers in the post-bellum nation.  As Brown so ably illustrates, the face of America after the Civil War was changing—and Frank Leslie’s changed with it.  New faces appeared on its pages, the faces of labor, of immigration, of newly freed blacks, and of women.  To keep a readership large enough to sustain production and provide a profit, Frank Leslie’s had to portray these faces in a myriad of ways that would not alienate any large block of its readers.

To accomplish this goal, the engravers and editors at Frank Leslie’s engaged in a system of “social typing,” demonstrating with illustration both the characteristics of certain groups of people and the situations and locales in which these people may be found.  And here, as Brown demonstrates time and again, Frank Leslie’s shifted from view to view, from perspective to perspective, all in a manner designed to maintain its readership.  One example of this can be found in Frank Leslie’s treatment of freed blacks in the South.  Certainly, as Brown notes, Frank Leslie’s showed African Americans through a “limited range of types whose energy or indolence was founded on their putative innate, childlike qualities.”  At the same time, however, the portrayals of Exodusters migrating to Kansas were characterized by “ambition and dignity.”   Through its coverage, Frank Leslie’s provided images of blacks as both victims and perpetrators of violence, as both the unwitting dupes of the Republican Party and as an engaged and enthusiastic polity, as lazy and indolent and as hardworking and ambitious.  This same complexity and ongoing change in imagery can be found in Frank Leslie’s portrayals of women, of immigrants (particularly the Irish, who went from “thugs” to the face of the yeomanry), and those involved in the labor movement.  Throughout Beyond the Lines, Brown shows time and again that what one may call inconsistency in Frank Leslie’s images and editorial stand was actually a continuing process of renegotiation and reinvention of social types, as the newspaper sought to maintain its hold on its readers.

Most reviewers seem to agree with Bruce R. Kahler of Bethany College in Kansas, who found that “Brown is at his best when he closely examines the evolving visual strategies employed by Frank Leslies.”   While Kahler finds fault with Brown’s work overall, noting that it “adds little to our understanding of nineteenth-century American society,” other reviewers, like Helen Damon-Moore of Cornell, praise Brown’s work as, in Damon-Moore’s words, “an intelligent, engaging and significant contribution…to the social history of the Gilded Age.”  Of course, reviewers were nearly unanimous in their approval of the lavish use of images in Beyond the Lines, not surprising in a book about the illustrated press.

What perhaps could have enhanced Brown’s analysis of the social history of the Gilded Age would have been a closer look at the intersection between fact and fiction that seems inherent in the engraved illustrations as used by Frank Leslie’s.  Louie S. Warren explores this topic at length in his Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and The Wild West Show.  Warren demonstrates that his subject rose to national prominence as the result of a powerful combination of fact and fiction, of Cody’s “method of promoting his real achievements” by mingling them “with colorful fictions,” all with an eye toward producing a likeness and story that would enchant audiences and gain their willingness to purchase the product.  A similar case can be made for the illustrations in Frank Leslie’s.  These images, as noted by Brown, arose from a combination of the biases, viewpoints, prejudices, and concerns of artists, reporters, and editors, all seeking to craft the images in such a way as to maintain readership for the newspaper.  While Brown may argue for the greater authenticity contained within an engraved illustration by noting that “wood engravings presented readers with pictorial narratives of events” that served as “dramatic and detailed diagrams” of the events of the day, this is not enough.  For Buffalo Bill as for the images in Frank Leslie’s, the needs and desires of the audience determined in large measure the way the illusion of truth and accuracy were crafted.

  In Beyond the Lines, Joshua Brown has penned an insightful and penetrating glimpse into the importance of the illustrated press in capturing the places and faces of Gilded Age America.  Brown does leave his audience wanting more—a comparison with the imagery used in dime novels, perhaps, or an explanation of why the Chinese received such favorable treatment in the pages of Frank Leslie’s—but this merely serves to whet the appetite.  The mixture of social and cultural history by Brown is a heady one, not unlike the mixture of fact and fiction at the heart of the Gilded Age.  Readers will want more of the same.

Brown, Joshua.  Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Damon-Moore, Helen.  Review of Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America by Joshua Brown.  The American Historical Review 108, No. 3 (June 2003), pp. 846-847.

Kahler, Bruce R.  Review of Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America by Joshua Brown.  American Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Fall 2003), pp. 161-162.

Warren, Louis S.  Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show.  New York: Vintage Books, 2005.