On the 23rd January, 1874, is an interesting note.
"J. Cooper, engraver, came and proposed to illustrate, with seventy or eighty sketches, Washington Irving's Sketch Book. Went all through it and left me to consider. I like the idea."
In February he completed a drawing of the Quorn Hunt for the Graphic newspaper.
On the 12th March, he enters in his diary, "Preparing sketch of choir for W. Irving's Sketch Book;" showing that he was already at work on the book which was to make his reputation.
At the same time he was preparing illustrations and trying new processes of drawing for reproduction, to aid in founding a new newspaper.
How far Mr. Caldecott was ready to conquer difficulties in his art, and how heartily he aided his friends in any project with which he was connected, are matters of history closely connected with his engagement on the Pictorial World, which had a bright promise for the future in 1874.
Some of the large illustrations were produced by Dawson's "Typographic Etching" process. The drawings were made with a point on plates covered with a thin coating of wax, the artist's needle, as in etching, removing the wax and exposing the surface of the plate wherever a line was required in relief—"a fiendish process!" as Caldecott described it, but with which he succeeded in obtaining excellent results—better than any artist previously.
On the 7th of March, 1874, a new illustrated newspaper called the Pictorial World was started in London, of which the present writer was the art editor.
It was the time of the general election of 1874, when the defeat of Mr. Gladstone, the question of "Home Rule," and many exciting events were being recorded in the newspapers. Caldecott was asked to make a cartoon of the elections, and at once sat down and made the pencil sketch overleaf.