and publishers made no
concerted rush to avail themselves of the new type of cuts. Bewick's
pupils found little of this kind of work to do before about 1830. Luke
Clennell dropped engraving for painting; William Harvey restricted
himself to drawing and designing; Charlton Nesbit and John Jackson
remained engravers, as did a host of lesser individuals. Dobson
says:[26]

The pupils who quitted him to seek their fortunes in London either
made their way with difficulty, or turned to other pursuits, and
the real popularization of wood-engraving did not take place until
some years after his death.

One reason for delay in adopting the new technique may have been the
danger of the block splitting, or of the sections of wood coming apart
at the mortise-joints during the printing operation. If this happened,
work had to be suspended until a new block was engraved, or until the
sections were reglued. For periodicals with deadlines, this was a
serious hazard.

Wood Engraving and the Stereotype

In any event, wood engraving did not really flourish until a practical
stereotyping process was perfected. By this procedure substitute blocks
of type metal could replace the wood engravings in the press, and the
danger of splitting the block was eliminated. The first steps of any
importance toward a practical process were made by the Earl of Stanhope
around 1800, but not until Claude Genoux in France, between 1828 and
1829, developed the papier mache or wet mat process could acceptable
stereotypes of entire pages be produced.[27] By this method, patented on
July 24, 1829, and others that followed, a number of duplicate plates of
each page could be made as required for rapid printing on a battery of
presses. Wood engraving now emerged as a practical method of
illustration for popular publications. The _Penny Magazine_ and the
_Saturday Magazine_, founded in 1832, immediately made use of Genoux's
stereotyping process. Dobson[28] describes the effect of these
periodicals:

"The art of wood engraving received an astonishing impact from
these publications. The engraver, instead of working merely with
his own hands, has been obliged to take five or six pupils to get
through the work." (Mr. Cowper's evidence before the Select
Committee on Arts and Manufactures, 1835). It is difficult nowadays
[1884] to understand what a revelation these two periodicals, with
their representati