William Edward Dibble

An interesting addendum:

There are three illustrations in The Red Man's Rebuke that interest me. The Columbus image on the cover, the portrait of Pokagon, and the elevation illustration of Pokagon's village which is described as the native community built on the site which precedes Chicago.

(There are four more images at the end of the book, three animal images accompanied with poetry, and an image on the back cover. The animal images are clearly commerically mass produced electrotypes, probably from the collection of the Day Spring. The final image on the back is too unclear on the Smithsonian edition to make out.)

The Columbus piece and the indigenous village are both classic examples of wood engravings that were then turned into stereotyped plates. That's a pretty expensive process, and based on the quality of their reproduction, inappropriate for the birch bark. You just can't get a clear image on that surface.

A stereotype would have first been carefully engraved by a wood engraver who was contracted by a larger house to produce thousands and thousands of near photo quality reproductions of everyday objects and scenes. Wood engraving was at its peak at this period, filling up an inordinate number of mail-order catalogs. Once the wood engraving was done (finely incised into end-grain boxwood), the wood block was passed on to the electro or stereo department. By either an electroc chemical, or by a papier mache process, the wood engraving was duplicated in metal to make a durable printing surface.

This was a process that involved multiple craftsmen, was usually done at a larger scale (IE, all the images in a catalogue), and was most often used when the resulting image could be heavily reused (again, in the case of catalog work, or when the image could be used a standard graphic to accompany variable text... like clip art for advertising.)

It's not suited for small runs, or for discrete one-off printing projects.

Why go through the time and expense?

You'll notice, for example, that the Day Spring before 1899 (so, when Rebuke was made) rarely uses any images at all. And when it does, the images are commonly repeated images. These would have been cast in solid type high metal and sold by a typefoundry along with their regular assortments of type. If you do see an advertising image not found in a standard type catalogue, it would have been a stereo or electro made for the same mass purpose. I don't think there is a single custom image in the HDS before 1900.

This fits with how under-capitalized the printer was.

So, Engle comes to the HDS, and they agree to handset the text (using mismatched title type, by the way... a full catalogue of the type used is forthcoming... but they were clearly using only exactly what they had in the shop.)

So Engle went to extra expense, and went outside the normal processes of his printer, to get custom images included in this book. Why?

In 1883(7), Washington Engle published his first book, Poems. And instead of printing it in town, when I presume the HDS was incapable of producing a book of any sort, he contracted with a firm in Chicago called Dibble Publishing.

(You can read more fully about William Edward Dibble in The Story of Chicago, posted below, which he published in two volumes in 1892 and 1893.)

The short history here is that William Dibble ran a publishing firm in Chicago. From 1865-into the mid 1870s, he was a successful sales agent of popular, and HEAVILY illustrated books. Most famously, he was the sales agent for the copiously illustrated Picturesque America (also included below).

Washington's book of poetry was one of Dibble's earliest publishing ventures, and seems have been part of the lead up to his 11-volume "Library of American Literature" which seems to been a large enough failure as to force Dibble into bankruptcy, selling his company to Charles Webster & Co. Dibble became their sales manager.

But as the Wold Columbian Exposition neared, Dibble returned to publishing, financing the production of a wide range of titles anchored to the fair. If you look at his publication record in your university library (search "Dibble Publishing") you'll find a cluster of books published between 1890 and 1895, including a book about the Chicago Massacre of 1812, a 2 volume history of Chicago (which seems to only include biographies of businessmen Dibble knew personally, and culminates with a biography of the man himelf) as well as a fully-illustrated guide to the Exposition itelf. The other books he published were largely novels by a single elderly novelist, Joseph Kirkland, who was also the author of the first volume of The Story of Chicago (his daughter had to finish the second volume because Kirkland died before completion).

Dibble seems to have been an oportunistic and sensationalistic publisher trying to capitalize on the Exposition and the gathering crowds. In his brief biography, he primarly congratulates himself on how many famous people he was able to get to respond to his letters when he sent them free copies of books he was trying to sell. He would then use their gracious complimentary replies in his advertising copy.

So, here is a con-man publisher of the first order who has an established relationship with the Engles.

(It's also worth noting that he seems to have been friends with the publisher of the Inter Ocean a short-lived and heavily illustrated Chicago newspaper that had an established relationship with the Hartford Day Spring.)

Did Dibble supply the two electro/stereotyped images for Rebuke?

Are they reused images from another project he was connected with?

Was the book itself his idea? Or did he at least encourage it's production?

I do find it interesting that Dibble published a book about the 1812 Massacre, and then Engle reports that he and Pokagon returned from the fair to encourage Old Wapsey to come back to the fair with them because he was the last surving combatant on the indidgenous side.

I think it's interesting that the actual portrait of Pokagon is NOT a wood engraving converted to either an elctro or a stereo. It looks to be CARVED in wood, with bolder, more graphic fields of color. Possibly something a local artist could have done, but nonetheless a cheaper piece of work.

And it has the dignity to print clearly on the birch bark.

I think it is reasonably likely that the electro images (especially the one of Columbus) can be found in another book and does not originate with this book.

Probably when I dig into the actual scholarship I will find out?