The success of the McLoughlin Bros. can be traced to the rapid evolution in the power of illustration. In earlier chapbook-size publications, illustration had an important though nonetheless merely decorative function: Isaiah Thomas's eighteenth century antecedents carried the phrase, "embellished with cuts [woodcuts]" on the title page. But, after 1800, the size and quality of the printed image increased, and the small, hieroglyphic woodcuts were abandoned for refined and complex wood engravings. "Embellishments" became interpretive, gained a greater ability to signify, and, consequently, grew in stature. In the less parochial and more competitive publishing world of the 1830's, illustration became more crucial to a book's success, challenging the text for preeminence (ultimately even surpassing it). While technological advancement allowed illustration to evolve, the texts of nursery rhymes could not. Their claim to traditional authority--to having been authored by Mother Goose--depended upon their familiarity. They constituted a mature product, and so, like all canonized texts, there existed, for publishers and educators alike, a continuing crisis of relevance. Illustration proved to be one solution, a text could remain relevant indefinitely if provided with an ever-changing suite of illustrations, but with a clear consequence: Mother Goose slowly metamorphosed from a simple, universally recognizable, trope into a rich and ultimately inconsistent matrix of competing images.