How printmakers chronicled and influenced Lincoln's transfiguration into an American icon

Focusing on prints produced in Lincoln's lifetime and in the iconographically important months immediately following his death, this lavishly illustrated volume--now available in paperback for the first time--pairs original photographs and paintings with the prints made from them. Featuring the work of Currier and Ives, John Sartain, and other artists, the juxtaposition reveals how the printmakers reworked the original images to refine Lincoln's appearance, substituting his image for those of earlier politicians or adding a beard to images of him that originally appeared clean-shaven.

The Lincoln Image also includes wartime cartoons, Lincoln family portraits (most of which appeared after the assassination), and renderings of the fateful moment of the shooting at Ford's Theatre. In addition to discussing the prints themselves, prominent Lincoln scholars Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt, and Mark E. Neely Jr. examine the political environment of the nineteenth century that sustained and helped to shape the market for political prints, showing how images of Lincoln were made, altered, and manipulated before, during, and after the Civil War.

Harold Holzer is vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the author or editor of several books, including Lincoln at Cooper Union. Gabor Boritt, Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, is the author of The Lincoln Enigma and other books. Mark E. Neely Jr., McCabe Greer Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University, is the author of The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America and other books.