He also produced designs for book illustration: in the Abbotsford edition of the Waverley Novels (Cadell, 1841–6), and in A & C Black's edition of the same works (1852–3); Spenser's Faerie Queene and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Routledge, 1853); Martin Farquhar Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy (1854); and Robert Aris Willmott's Poets of the Nineteenth Century (1857), and Merrie Days of England (1858–9).
Topham also made designs for Fisher, Son & Co.'s edition of the Waverley Novels, some of which he engraved.
He was largely employed by publishers, illustrating the Waverley Novels and the Historical Annual of his brother Richard Cattermole (his scenes from the wars of Cavaliers and Roundheads in this series are among his best engraved works), and many other volumes besides.
Akin to these were his illustrative drawings of costume and scenery, many of them suggested by incidents in the ‘Waverley Novels.’
In 1853, it was established as a borough within Pennsylvania; since there already was a borough named "Abington" located near Philadelphia, the town was renamed Waverly after Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Novels, popular at that time.
Whilst serving his articles he frequently had the delight of meeting Sir Walter Scott, and many of the local characters who appeared in the Waverley Novels, in addition to Sir David Brewster, then living at Gattonside, James Hogg, better known as "The Ettrick Shepherd", and many other of Scott's personal friends.
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The collective name "Waverley", after the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, was used for the three from around 1854 when the through 'Waverley' route to Carlisle opened.