Dalziel Brothers (London)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

The Dalziel Brothers were a highly productive and inventive firm of Victorian wood-engravers, draughtsmen, printers and publishers founded in 1839 by George Dalziel (1 December 1815-1902) and his brother Edward Dalziel (1817-1905). George Dalziel trained under Charles Gray in London from around 1835. They were later joined by John Dalziel and Thomas Dalziel (1823-1906). All were sons of the artist, Alexander Dalziel of Wooler in Northumberland.

The Dalziel brothers worked with many important Victorian artists, producing illustrations for the burgeoning magazine and book market of the period. Among the artists they worked with were Arthur Boyd Houghton, Richard Doyle, John Gilbert, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and James McNeill Whistler. They cut the illustrations to Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense (1862); Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. They were celebrated for their engravings of Millais' illustrations and for their contribution to the Moxon Tennyson.