In the nineteenth century, the people of Alabama relied on newspapers to
learn about the world outside their own hometowns. Prior to the 1890s,
the technology did not exist to economically publish photographs in
newspapers, so some publishers employed artists to draw and engrave
images of places, events, and people. Many of these engraved
illustrations, which accompanied news stories, poems, and short fiction,
are impressive for their detail and artistic quality. From the 1850s to
the 1890s, more than 250 engraved images of Alabama were published in
national and international illustrated newspapers. Alabama Illustrated
contains nearly 50 of those illustrations from five nineteenth-century
newspapers such as Harper's Weekly. These striking black-and-white
images depict city and country scenes of everything from politics and
civil war to agriculture, industry, entertainment, and everyday life,
providing readers passionate about history and art a unique insight into
Alabama's rich cultural past.