Unattributed "Pennsylvania College, at Gettysburg" [now Gettysburg College]

Unattributed. "Pennsylvania College, at Gettysburg." From Eli Bowen's The Pictorial Sketch-Book of Pennsylvania. 

Philadelphia: William Bromwell, 1853. 2 1/4 x 3 7/8. Wood-engraving.  Very good condition.

From an excellent series of views of Pennsylvania from a guide book of Pennsylvania’s “Scenery, Internal Improvements, Resources, and Agriculture, Popularly Described.”  As the nexus of roads, canals, and rail systems expanded, so too did the middle-class capacity and desire for travel – and for accompanying guide-books.  Eli Bowen’s guide, issued in 1853, fulfilled that demand ably.  The volume included descriptions of all parts of Pennsylvania, but its most notable feature was the set of engraved illustrations of all parts of the state.  Based on first-hand drawings, the images were printed by the process of wood-engraving.  Because its matrix was the same as the printer’s typeface, wood-engravings could be run on  the same press as the text.  Convenient and easily engraved, such a block (usually a piece of end-grain wood) was capable of holding a remarkable amount of detail, offering the printer an efficient yet effective means of integrating images into his text. Bowen’s series is especially desirable, as it contains some of the only views made in the middle of the nineteenth century of many small towns in Pennsylvania.