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Dr Leo De Freitas | Early chapbook illustration of Robinson Crusoe

There are those who consider all that is to be said about chapbooks has been said and those [including myself] who consider this far from the case. The presentation intends to explore the likely sources of one set of chapbook illustrations to Robinson Crusoe, consider the reproductive processes employed, and assess the possible effect for their readership.

Leo John De Freitas successfully submitted his MA and PhD theses on commercial engraving on wood 1700-1918 at the Royal College of Art. He has lectured extensively in various universities on the history of British illustration 1500-2010, written on both historical and contemporary illustration and curated exhibitions for his own Graphicus Touring company.

Dr Giles Bergel | How to teach computers to find, match and classify woodcuts

This presentation, drawing on a recent collaboration with the National Library of Scotland on their chapbook collections, will demonstrate how computer vision (or ‘visual AI’) can support the study of printed illustrations. Computer vision can efficiently find all the illustrations in a large collection; isolate single instances of an illustration (such as impressions from specific blocks); and can - to some extent - find illustrations containing the same subject. These methods can help the researcher to identify the place or date of printing of a work, or to study large collections at scale in order to determine popular subjects or types of illustration. The paper will demonstrate free software developed for these purposes; discuss its strengths and weaknesses; and consider its overall place within the illustration researcher’s toolbox.

Giles Bergel is Senior Researcher in Digital Humanities in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. A book historian by training, he has interests in cheap print such as ballads and chapbooks; copyright studies; and book trade history. He broadly works on digitisation projects for museums and libraries, particularly those involving artificial intelligence, and was the National Library of Scotland’s first Research Fellow in Digital Scholarship in 2020-21.

Thanks to the University of Wolverhampton for hosting this event.