Doyle Woodblock Carving

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This is an exquisite woodblock carving created by W. T. Green from a meticulous drawing by Richard Doyle, carefully crafted as a full-page carving for "Part the Second" of Charles Dickens' iconic novel The Battle of Life. Interestingly, Doyle was the uncle of renowned author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Some sections of the scan are unfortunately missing due to insufficient overlap, but fortunately, this woodblock carving played a crucial role in printing a highly respected and archived book, thus rendering digital printing unnecessary. We still chose to do it anyway to compare results, and the outcome is remarkably good. The original: These remarkable scans form part of an ongoing series of Victorian-era woodblocks being extensively studied by Dr. Michael Hancher of the UMN English department. The blocks are carefully preserved as part of the extensive collections held by the Special Collections and Rare Books unit of the University of Minnesota Libraries. Scans were meticulously made in AISOS, a highly advanced research facility located within LATIS Labs in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus.