The William James Linton Archive is part of the Melton Prior Institute’s collections and offers access to the history and practice of wood engraving, a printing technique that held central significance for the rise of the illustrated press as a mass medium. This historical development is epitomized by William James Linton, an engraver, publisher and influential historian of xylography, who, together with his workshop, was responsible for the major part of the illustrations in the «London Illustrated News», the first illustrated weekly magazine to deal with political faits divers. In his career, a relationship between the artistic ethos pertaining to relief printing practices and an uncompromising republican–democratic stance often described as «radical» becomes clearly visible. This interrelation can be traced back to the 18th and early 19th century’s rich culture of pamphlet and relief printing, which has found its most splendid expression in the revolutionary prints of artist-poet William Blake and his technique of «illuminated printing.» It is an equally constitutive part of this archive’s activities.