The Illustrated London News, launched by Herbert Ingram in 1842, was the world's first illustrated newspaper and is an unequalled visual document of the past 160 years. The archive also consists of eight other titles: The Graphic, The Sphere, The Sketch, The Bystander, The Tatler, The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, The Illustrated War News and Britannia and Eve. All of these publications came together under the collective title of "The Great Eight" in the late 1920s with the iconic Illustrated London News as its flagship.

As well as being an excellent resource for images of events and personalities, the library also boasts a rich seam of illustration by some of the great artists of the period, adding a creative dimension to our strong editorial holdings.

The ILN archive has been housed at Mary Evans since a management buyout of the ILN Publishing Group from its former parent company, Sea Containers, in December 2007.

All ILN material that has been scanned is now available for licencing exclusively via the Mary Evans site, and we are adding new material on a regular basis. Our search facility also includes an option to search ILN images only.

In March 2010, Cengage Learning launched a full digitised Illustrated London News, allowing researchers unprecedented online access to this invaluable historical resource. Available through universities and subscribing libraries and institutions, click here to find out more.

Image licensing continues to be handled by Mary Evans Picture Library and researchers requesting high resolution images via Cengage for reproduction will be referred back to us.