English Illustration 'The Sixties': 1855-70 With Numerous Illustrations by Ford Madox Brown: A. Boyd Houghton: Arthur Hughes: Charles Keene: M. J. Lawless: Lord Leighton, P.R.A.: Sir J. E. Millais, P.R.A.: G. Du Maurier: J. W. North, R.A.: G. J. Pinwell: Dante Gabriel Rossetti: W. Small: Frederick Sandys: J. Mcneill Whistler: Frederick Walker, A.R.A.: and Others

The book offers a lively, scholarly walk through English illustration during the mid‑Victorian era, focusing on the years 1855‑1870. It blends concise historical commentary with vivid reproductions by a roster of celebrated artists such as Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, James McNeill Whistler and many others, giving listeners a sense of the visual culture that shaped the period’s books and magazines. The author’s preface reveals the challenges of cataloguing a thousand‑plus works, the personal biases that inevitably colour any selection, and the humour that arises when today’s eyes meet once‑fashionable bonnets and turbans.

Listeners will hear anecdotes about the painstaking research, the gratitude owed to collectors and publishers, and the hope of reviving interest in illustrations that have slipped from public memory. By the end of the first act, the narrative establishes both the richness of the era’s artistic output and the thoughtful, sometimes self‑critical, approach taken to present it.