Emilie's+Home



Picturesque America or, The Land We Live In. Edited by William Cullen Bryant Compiled by Emilie Pichot flat

=Cover Design = Everything about the cover of the book (the dimensions, the texture, the illustration, and the typeface) lends itself to the meaning of the book as a whole. The dimensions, for instance, suggest the gravity of the work as well as how important visual stimulation will be during the reading experience. The texture is rough and grainy, similar to the soil and gravel that carries the landscapes shown. The illustration of the artist's palette and paintbrushes signals a topic of art and artistry. Finally, the typeface, in its lavishness and long tails, gives detail to the attention to beauty that will be explored within the tome. The cover also hints at the book's subscription status: the subscriber added their name after they had received the parts of the series.



=Size =

 A national “monument" (Rainey, xiii), like a stoic monumental building or statue, but one that can be owned and cherished at home, it is not surprising that Picturesque America weighs 20 pounds and includes 1000 pages. With its size it emanates tactility – having arm spans of textured, rough covers with gold engravings, and thick pages with black ink that sit on the page and can be perceived on your fingertips. The size is the first notable feature of this book: 13 3/8” x 10 1/8”.

=Publisher =

The publisher of Picturesque America is D. Appleton & Company. Daniel Appleton from Haverhill, Massachusetts created this publishing company after he moved to New York in 1826. He started out as a dry-goods merchant and eventually started selling books. His first book was Crumbs from the Master’s Table. Later, with the help of his son, he began publishing books in the sciences, medicine, textbooks, books about travelling, encyclopedias, and fiction. One of the science books was Darwin’s Origins of Species and he also published famous pieces of fiction such as the Sherlock Holmes novels by Arthur Conan Doyle and stories by Stephen Crane. By 1865, his publishing endeavors were ranked second “in size and influence" (“Appleton & Co, D.” //The Oxford Companion to the Book //.) behind Harper & Bros in the United States.

 The company went bankrupt in 1900 after publishing a series of expensive volumes of fiction for book club subscribers. Subscription book publishing emerged as a way to sell books to people who lived in the countryside and would otherwise have to make long journeys into the cities to buy books. Thus, Book salesmen and canvassers were sent into the country to sell subscriptions, a process that slightly foreshadows that of today’s magazine and journal subscriptions. Subscription book publishing became a very popular form of selling books, as people were more likely to buy books in that way and in large quantities. Picturesque America, not surprisingly, was one of those elaborate projects. The book was published in small sections twice every month and then collected together and bound as the owner desired. It was published in 48 separate issues and contained “hundreds of woodcuts and steel engravings by the foremost artisans of the day” (Overton, 10) over 24 pages. Each volume of the series was wrapped in a cover much like the cover of the book. This great success led to other related works such as Picturesque Europe, Picturesque Palestine, and Picturesque Canada.



The editor was William Cullen Bryant, a significant relationship because of his careful and cautious taste. Bryant’s poetry had been published by the House of Appleton, but he was unsatisfied with the illustrated version finding that the “artists did not always catch the spirit of the text”(Overton, 39). His great appreciation for the relationship between word and image and his knowledge of the American landscape would be a significant factor in his meticulous work for Picturesque America.  By the time Appleton & Co. reorganized after the bankruptcy, it was no longer a family business, merging with Century Company. After World War II, Appleton & Co. would also merge with F.S. Crofts & Co. and become Appleton-Century-Crofts. The company would dominate textbook publishing in the United States until decades after 1950.

=Provenance =

Subscribers to Picturesque America were “of the literary and intellectual elite”(Rainey, 77) who had a keen interest in nature, art, and the ideal of the picturesque. The rising middle class was also a significant portion of the book’s audience. This allowed for the middle class to be patrons of art, participating in the establishment of the United States as a competitor to England in illustration.

In this edition of Picturesque America, a name is inscribed in gold lettering on the cover: Mary L. Webb. As the book has no one author, nor does their name appear on the cover, having the name of an owner inscribed on the front elevates their status quite high. It must have been quite an expense to have one’s name etched into a cover in addition to the gold used.



In addition, the insides of the back cover have a vibrant and vivid marbling, another attribute that must have been added by Mary L. Webb, the first owner of the book, who would have had the book bound and personalized according to her taste. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Another piece of evidence of ownership, besides a few stains and tears here and there, is the signature at the beginning of the book.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> The name, Melana M. Howes or Melua M. Howes, is written in cursive and in foundational italics. This means that the owner may have been the first owner, in 1872, or a later owner who had been trained in foundational italics. This owner must have come after Mary L. Webb, since there would be no reason to inscribe one’s name twice in the same book.



<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Interestingly, the marbling sheet on the back has been torn on one side, showing some book waste that was used when the book was bound, making it a 19th century palimpsest. Perhaps this is a sign that Howes selected the marbling paper and had the book rebound? In any case, this shows the great amount of work that was put into keeping this beautiful book together.



<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Another sign of provenance is by the 100th page or so, the texture of the pages becomes smoother. As a large book, this is no surprise because readers were most likely to glance through the first several 100 pages and then stop. This book was most likely never read straight through and in the formatted order. Readers would have glanced through at the illustrations or would have immediately found a location of interest and read that particular section.

=<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Paratexts =

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> Picturesque America has exactly three pages of text that are in addition to the main text, known as paratexts, in the form of the preface written by the editor William Cullen Bryant. In his preface, Bryant introduces the purpose of the book: "It is the design of the publication…to present full descriptions and elaborate pictorial delineations of the scenery characteristic of all the different parts of our country. The wealth of material for this purpose is almost boundless" (Bryant, preface).

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> The book also has two guides to help the readers navigate the text. The first is a table of contents and the second is a ‘List of Engravings on Steel’ that includes information and the location of all the large illustrations that are printed on the thicker, rougher pieces of paper throughout the book.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> This is more proof of Picturesque America’s visual function, detailing and listing the illustrations rather than having a long preface (Bryant’s is only two pages long) and a foreword, afterword, etc. The book was mainly a beautiful, visual vista to the gorgeous landscapes that cover the United States rather than an expository on the land itself.

=<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> Illustrations =

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> Picturesque America, a book meant to be visually admired, is packed with illustrations made from etchings on wood and steel. Those made from woodblocks are on the same kind of softer, thinner paper that the text is printed on while the steel prints are on a thicker, coarser kind of paper. These prints, having been made from engravings on steel, are lithographs – a technique in which an engraving is made on a sheet of metal and then ink is poured onto it, filling up the wedges in the metal and then eventually leaving the consecutive marks on the print, unlike a stamp.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> The illustrations are not completely under the style of realism, nor are they “straightforward” or merely documenting: the artists had an agenda, “nostalgia”, and “hope for the future” that was seen through their work (Rainey, xiv). Rainey calls the book a “window on the post Civil War years, opening to our view the beliefs and attitudes that determined how many Americans thought about themselves, their landscape, and the rest of the world" (Rainey, xvi).

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> Even though wood engravings and printed images were still the main source through which people saw their country, photography could have been the chosen art form for Picturesque America. But the main intention of the book was not to document or record. As Bryant writes in his preface, “Photographs…lack the spirit and personal quality which the accomplished painter or draughtsman infuses into his work" (Bryant, preface).

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Appropriately, the book begins with of Castle Head from Mount Desert on the coast of Maine for intentional reasons. This was selected as the first part of the series because it served as proof that the United States had beautiful coastal scenes just like England, another way Picturesque America functioned as a sort of show and tell object. Images of Maine were also chosen because it was a popular tourist destination for city slickers at the time, indicating the book’s status as a sort of hefty travel guide. An early Lonely Planet coffee table book, for instance (Williams).

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> The eyes relish the 900 elaborately detailed works within the book, particularly the opening page. According to Rainey, it “provides depth of coverage through multiple images that give the armchair traveller a sense of seeing the region from many different viewpoints" (Rainey, 85). <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">The book opens with “Cascade in Virginia” by Harry Fenn, the principal illustrator, depicting a man who is most likely himself painting a waterfall scene. What is most captivating is the nearly three-dimensional title. The typeface is meant to look like old wood, incredibly avant-garde for 1872, and contrasts perfectly with the background, immediately grabbing the reader’s attention. This page in itself is a great example of the visual stimulation provided in this book. A book that is, in fact, meant to make its readers experience the most beautiful landscapes of the United States of America.  <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> All of the illustrations interact in a very direct way with the text: displaying in great detail the beautiful landscapes explored in the text. One illustration in particular, of the Weyer’s Cave in Virginia, depicts four different parts of the cave in a very organic, storyboard-like format. The illustration interacts with the text very succinctly; providing little vignettes of the small sections of the cave described. This particular illustration may have been chosen to be printed from a woodblock because of its large dark spaces, negating the need for the more difficult to etch into steel. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> What is most interesting, though, is how the illustrations portray the views of nature at the time. In the 19th century, there was much thought and writing on beauty in nature and what makes a landscape supposedly picturesque. Three general qualifying terms were used to stratify different landscapes and their affect on the human observers: the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">The sublime was used to describe landscapes that instilled awe-inspiring fear in its observers. Typically, it would be depicted through a large difference in scale between the landscape elements and the humans portrayed in the image. Mountains, storms, caves - anything dark and dangerous - was considered sublime. In Picturesque America, the sublime can be seen in several illustrations: The Natural Bridge in Virginia on page 82, the Mount Washington Road in New Hampshire on page 150, the Geyser in Yellowstone National Park on page 216, the Mackinac in Michigan on page 279, the Canon of Yellowstone on page 295, Tower Falls of Yellowstone Valley on page 305, the Giant Geyser from Yellowstone on page 314, and Cathedral Rock on page 388. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">The beautiful, on the other hand, includes scenes that are familiar, pleasurable, and proportioned. Notice how the figures in the image below are, in fact, above the scene unlike in the sublime scenes due to a change in perspective. The example used is called “Delaware Water-Gap, looking south from Shawnee” and is located on page 101. Picturesque America is full of other illustrations depicting the ‘beautiful’, mostly scenes from more ‘civilized’ locales like cities, towns, and villages. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">The picturesque comes in between the sublime and the beautiful because it includes enough fascinating elements, yet is calm enough to be considered beautiful. In short, it captures enough interest to be picture-worthy yet isn’t everyday like the beautiful. The image below is an image of “Mauch Chunk”, a small mountainside town in Pennsylvania. Accordingly, the mountains provide elements of the sublime while the scene is still familiar enough with the village.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;"> These differing types of beauty were prevalent in landscape art in Europe throughout the century. After the publication of Picturesque America, the United States then became a new tourist location for those looking to experience these different emotionally moving landscapes. According to Rainey, "…by a direct, unmediated encounter with this natural element, the tourist could experience feelings ranging from sensual delight in the beauty of nature to worshipful appreciation of the Creator and the created order, to forgetfulness of self and mystical union with the natural feature" (Rainey, 89). This natural, spiritual experience was what brought an influx of tourists to travel across the United States after the publication of the book. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Though most of the illustrations in Picturesque America are of the countryside, even some illustrations portray Native Americans; there are quite a few images of cities. The cities of New Orleans, Providence, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and the Golden Gate of San Francisco are included. One illustration, of the mining village of Mauch Chunk in Pennsylvania, focuses primarily on a train. This means that the book did, in fact, include scenes of industrialization. Several illustrations have smoke stacks in the background as well as large, industrial ships. =<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Legacy =

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Picturesque America, inspired several tomes of the same style, made the United States a force to be reckoned with in the illustration world, and united the post-Civil War era nation under the same sense of self-image. The book, as Rainey asserts, had "several cultural functions. These ranged from instructing in picturesque touring and serving as a status symbol, to enhancing American art and publishing, to fostering a positive self-image of the United States, and thus nationalism and tourism, to allaying uneasiness about disturbing changes of all sorts" (Rainey, 275 - 276). Besides this weighty influence, 20th century artists would be inspired by its name and ideals.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">For example, artists Dana Gibson and Harry Grant Dart both used the name “picturesque America” as titles for illustrations. But their use of the name was different. Aware and concerned of the social issues of the day, Gibson and Dart both chose the name as an ironic quip, a sharp slap to the saddening fact that their country was now a place where sex, economy, and money were more highly valued than aesthetics and traditions. This transition, occurring at the turn of the century, made Picturesque America and its ideals a relic.

=<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Sources = <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">“American Scenery: Different Views in Hudson River School Painting Guide”. Blanton Art Museum, The University of Texas at Austin. PDF File. “Appleton & Co, D.” The Oxford Companion to the Book, 2012. Web. Bryant, William Cullen, ed. Picturesque America: The Land We Live In. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1872. Print. “Daniel Appleton.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th edition, November 11, 2011. Web. “Daniel Appleton.” Hutchinson’s Biography Database, 2011. Web. Overton, Grant. Portrait of a Publisher and the First Hundred Years of the House of Appleton, 1825 – 1925. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1925. Print. Rainey, Sue. Creating ‘Picturesque America’. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994. Print. Tebbel, John. A History of Book Publising in the United States: Volume I The Creation of an Industry, 1630 – 1865. New York: R.R. Bowker & Co., 1972. Print. Williams, Jenny. “Lonely Planet’s Coffee Table Books Bring Adventure Into Your Homes.” WIRED Magazine, 6 November 2012. Web. 29 November 2012.