Douglas Jerrold (ed.):

The Illuminated Magazine was edited by Linton’s friend, the Republican journalist and playwright Douglas Jerrold, a member of the Craven Hill circle. He belonged to the cadre of the socio-critical satirical magazine Punch, after whose example this new journal was modelled. He announced it as „a periodical in which our social abuses and social follies might be commented on with boldness (...) and by an earnest desire for their speedy, yet withal, their most charitable amendment.“ The magazine was known for its special mixture of light fiction and serious social reportage, among them articles about the conditions in prisons and mental asylums and a rather eloborate report about child labour in the coal mines by Richard Hengist Horne, who was one of the members of a parliamentary children’s employment commission. Most of the illustrators like John Leech, Kenny Meadows, John Gilbert or H.G. Hine were recruited from the Punch staff, and Ebenezer Landells, the initiator of Punch magazine was the one who held „the superintendence over the whole of engraving.“ Although Linton never mentioned Landells in any of his publications about wood engraving, he owed a lot to this most influential of Bewick disciples. Linton here engraved the illustrations for Mark Lemon’s report about „The Boys of London“, a documentary about street vendors that anticipated Henry Mayhew’s Street Life Reports by years.