Should books be illustrated?

All books, in a sense, exist in order to bring forth pictures in the mind. But should those pictures be specifically embodied in a visual medium? When are illustrations helpful, and when are they distracting or disturbing? Is it better for readers to make their own images? Or can a good collaboration between author and illustrator create a result that is more than the sum of its parts?

When I reread the Oz books as a picture-less electronic text, I was struck by how different this experience was from reading them as a child. The images by John R. Neill, who illustrated all but the first of the original series, had made a deep impression on me. Full of life and vivid character, they contribute a piquancy that Baum’s text sometimes lacks, in its pallid or generic descriptions. I’m quite sure that this visual element was as important to me as the words for making Oz seem a real and attractive place.

Illustration by John R. Neill from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

We expect children’s books to be illustrated, but what about books for adults? We’re being increasingly shaped by visual media, and every time I go to the bookstore I see a mind-boggling array of visually stunning volumes. But novels still are seldom illustrated, nor are works of philosophy or science or history usually given an artistic, interpretive treatment.

There are some specialist publishers that do this, The Folio Society being the main one that I know of. I always get a kick out of seeing Folio do illustrated versions of unexpected works like Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, or The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud — even if I wouldn’t buy them myself, I think it’s an interesting experiment to make.

The books I’m more drawn to are the narratives, and here I often have mixed feelings. I am usually not coming at them afresh, but looking at a text that I already know and judging whether the pictures give the same impression as the reading experience. Not whether they match pictures in my head — I don’t visualize characters or settings so specifically. But the words give me certain feelings; do the pictures evoke the same feelings? Or do they go in another direction, that jars against my vaguely but often strongly held impressions?

I may like some aspect of the artist’s vision, but not be completely satisfied. One case in point is the Folio edition of The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (you are all reading Robertson Davies, aren’t you?) I love the idea of combining characters and incidents from the book, saints and figures from the Tarot. That was brilliant, and the artist did not shrink from portraying the chthonic emotion, the archetypal mythic currents that Davies seeks to expose beneath the prim moral exterior of Canadian provincial life. But I find his style too aggressively ugly overall, and thought there should have been some element of beauty and mystery as well. To me, that was an important element of the trilogy too. (I do love the cover, which is perfect.)

Cover of the Deptford Trilogy, design by Peter Suart

It’s rather like the problem of translation: a work translated into another language can never be the same as the original, but it can strive to give a similar experience, based on the particular conventions and associations in the second language. Is it archaic, formal, wild, deliberate, transgressive, prissy, melodious, laconic, flippant? These qualities can be conveyed using the tools available in another language — which may be quite different from those in the first, but still reach toward a similar effect.

So in the “language” of art one can try to strive after such similarity of effect. Opinions will differ about the success of such projects, because each reader has a somewhat different experience of a text. And there can be multiple treatments that are satisfying in different ways, too. I don’t think there’s any definitive or right answer to the question of how to represent a book’s contents, but it’s a rather fascinating question.

How do you feel about illustrated books? Are you attracted by them, or do you prefer your text unadorned? Are there some illustrations you find more successful than others?

Linked in the Book Blog Discussion Challenge hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight!

The Reluctant Romantic: Relationship Status

For Doing Dewey’s Reluctant Romantic challenge, I decided it was a good time to read some graphic…something. I don’t actually have a good name for this genre, because “graphic novels” doesn’t quite cut it. Many of the books that often get lumped into this category are memoirs or nonfiction, and even the fiction books are not what I could call “novels.” In their length and substance, they’re more like short stories or novellas.

Leaving that question aside, let’s just say that I read a selection of books in which the pictures help to tell the story, generally drawing on the “comic strip” tradition, with multiple panels on a page and characters speaking in speech bubbles. I was reminded that one reason I don’t usually gravitate to this type of book is that they go by so quickly for me! Most can be read in an hour or two, and I miss the extended reading experience I usually am seeking. But I absolutely loved their creativity and visual energy, and will definitely seek out more in the future, probably more as a break between “regular” books than in a block on their own.

My favorite find was The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua. I want Padua to quit her day job (she’s an animator for the film industry) and write more books like this! For one thing, it had a bit more heft than some of the others, so it wasn’t over quite so quickly. But mainly I loved that it was funny and informative and silly and serious and played around with the people and ideas and literary traditions of the Victorian era in a totally original way, while shedding light on some of our modern technology. This may not be a book for absolutely everyone, but for me it was perfect.

Also high on my list was Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. This author was born in the same year as I was, yet because she grew up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution she had a dramatically different childhood. It was moving and thought-provoking to see events I only heard of in school, and mostly ignored, experienced as they were happening by a girl who was in many ways just like me, yet in other ways so different. Each panel was carefully constructed with deceptive simplicity, reflecting the “child’s-eye” perspective yet showing a very adult sensitivity to composition and line.

I also need to mention Stitches by David Small. A renowned illustrator of children’s picture books, he turns his artistic talents here to the harrowing story of his own horrifically mismanaged childhood — unwise medical treatments leave him terribly disfigured, while his strangely distant parents offer little in the way of support or understanding. Small’s fluid and expressive drawing style brings painful scenes before us with cinematic intensity, awakening our compassion for a boy who turned suffering into art.

I also enjoyed all of the other books that I “speed dated” for this challenge:

Maus by Art Spiegelman
Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang
Ethel and Ernest by Raymond Briggs
The Arrival by Shaun Tan

…so I think our relationship will be continuing! Do you have any other suggestions for me?

A Regency Sketchbook: Mrs Hurst Dancing

For my next (and possibly last) Austen in August contribution, I wanted to let readers know about a lovely book I chanced upon through this post at Charlotte’s Library: Mrs Hurst Dancing and Other Scenes from Regency Life, 1812-1823 (Victor Gollancz, 1981). This reproduction of two volumes of sketchbooks by a young lady of Jane Austen’s era provides an unusual glimpse into the daily life of an English country house of modest size.

The artist, Diana Sperling (about whom little is known, and who apparently abandoned art upon her marriage in 1834), has a delightfully unconventional and unstuffy approach to her sketches of family and friends. Slippery grass, recalcitrant donkeys, electrifying machines, lovelorn brothers, pesky flies that need to be “murdered” by maids standing on windowsills — these are just some of the subjects that inspired her, with charming results.

Diana’s artistic gifts are of the naive variety; her figures are not anatomically convincing, and she tends to make their faces very small and hide them behind large hats. But the liveliness and sheer fun of her compositions makes up for this. An introduction by Gordon Mingay gives the historical context, with brief notes opposite each picture (reproduced at their original size, and, as in the sketchbooks, on the right side of each spread).

We often read in nineteenth-century novels about young ladies industriously drawing and sketching. Here is a rare opportunity to see what a talented member of this legion of amateur artists produced, and to experience some of the forgotten details of their lives. Mrs Hurst Dancing is out of print, but used copies can be fairly inexpensive; check your library, too. For anyone interested in the era, it’s really worth seeking out.

Victoriana, Early and Late: Coronation Summer and Drawn from Memory

**Angela Thirkell, Coronation Summer (1937)**

**Ernest Shepard, Drawn from Memory (1957)**

By chance, I recently picked up two books that happened to be set at the beginning and near the end of Victoria’s reign. One was fiction, one non, but both were entertaining glimpses of that endlessly fascinating era.

It all started because my library didn’t have any of the Barsetshire novels by Angela Thirkell that I wanted, but they did have Coronation Summer, her early novel of the weeks surrounding Victoria’s coronation, which sounded delicious. The somewhat elaborate conceit is that when the pseudonymous Ingoldsby Legends come out, a young woman who thinks they are by a real acquaintance of hers reads a satirical poem about the coronation, and takes it at face value. This inspires her to remember how she and her best friend went to London for the event, which had proved to be a turning point in their personal lives as well as that of the nation.

The period pastiche was well done and often very amusing. I was impressed by Thirkell’s ability to imitate Victorian diction, while smiling at her sly references to other authors (and I’m sure there are many others that I missed). This is a very literate book, unlike many of the neo-Victorian and Regency novels that are being churned out today. However, I had a hard time warming up to the narrator, who is an empty-headed girl, thoughtlessly cruel to her servants, with nothing on her mind but suitors and the social whirl. As a side character to poke fun at she would have been perfect, but as the main character she was lacking in sympathetic qualities. Her romance was dull, not only because it was a foregone conclusion — the main story is told as a reminiscence after her marriage — but because the young man in question had almost no personality; his rival, a ridiculous dandy, was more interesting though no more likeable. One could perhaps detect some subtle social commentary in there, but mainly the book seemed a waste of good writing on such (to me) unworthy characters.

(By the way, if you pick up Coronation Summer hoping to have a ringside view of the actual coronation itself, you’ll be disappointed — only the men of the story attend and our female narrator is just waiting outside while the event takes place.)

A sketch by Shepard

I then turned to a book from the other end of Victoria’s reign, Drawn from Memory, which I was pleased to discover was in my library after I read a highly laudatory post over at The Captive Reader. This is a memoir by the artist most famous for his illustrations of Winnie-the-Pooh and The Wind in the Willows, though his main work was as a political cartoonist for Punch. Here are his amazingly detailed reminiscences, from seventy years later, of an upper-middle-class London boyhood. Shepard was seven years old in the year of Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, and gives a memorable account of the festivities from the point of view of a small boy. Other episodes include a holiday at a farm, family theatrics, and a first visit to a pantomime. Scenes involving a household of eminently Victorian aunts provide comic highlights.

The drawings plentifully scattered throughout are of course delightful, and a few samples of work done at this early age are astoundingly accomplished, fully justifying Shepard’s father’s opinion that his son should be an artist (although he himself wanted to be something a bit more exciting). There’s no need to tie the episodes together with any kind of unified plot, as the reader is happily led along from picture to picture.

Knowledge of the sorrow and death to come later in life does not overshadow the childish joys recorded in these pages, but a few indications of what is to come give Shepard’s sunny memories increased poignancy. For anyone interested in the period, or simply in revisiting the lost world of childhood, Drawn from Memory is an unqualified pleasure.

Links
Review of Drawn from Memory at The Captive Reader

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Beautiful Books: Picturing Jane Austen, Part Two

This is Part Two of my series covering different illustrated editions of the six novels of Jane Austen. For Part One, click here.

My earliest Austen acquisition was the 2007 Folio Society edition of Emma, illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat, which I purchased as part of my membership renewal. This is one of three matching Austen novels issued in that year, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion being the others. I’ve always wondered why there were no more — was the series never intended to be completed? Did the first volumes not sell well enough to continue? Was the artist too dissatisfied with his own work, or have a disagreement with the publisher? I am not in a position to know, but I’m curious.

To return to the book at hand, Emma is a pleasantly compact volume, with a medallion motif encircling the title on the spine, echoed in the publisher’s logo below and a gold-framed oval portrait of the title character on the front cover. This is set off by the wallpaper-like striped paper that covers the boards. The typeface is Bell, a more rounded and open font than Baskerville (which readers of Part One will remember as a popular choice for other Austen editions). It’s a friendly, appealing book, one that promises us a mannered domestic drama with pretty costumes. This suits the popular conception of Austen’s work, and is true to one layer of it, but misses some of the deeper levels.

Seven full-color illustrations were meticulously done in pen-and-ink and watercolor by the Thailand-born, London-based artist. In this gallery he has posted some of his sketches with notes, which are fascinating; among other tidbits of information he lets us know that he was only really happy with one of the drawings from the book, and dissatisfied with his Austen illustrations overall. I actually find his sketches much livelier and more engaging than the finished illustrations. Of these, the parts that I find most interesting are not the highly detailed figures, but the portions that he allows to be more empty and ambiguous: for example the background of the frontispiece, in which Knightley chastises Emma for her behavior on Box Hill. I admire the illustrations’ technical prowess and find pleasure in exploring all the meticulously drawn details of costume and deportment, yet they seem to lack some inner spark of life.

Puttapipat’s illustrations of animals (many of which can be found in other sections of his gallery) are absolutely stunning, but his carefully posed compositions do not quite succeed in capturing the complex human drama of Emma. I find myself wondering whether if he could allow himself to use a freer, more sketchy style it would help the characters to breathe more. He has said that he wishes he could have another go at Austen’s work, and I would love to see him make the attempt.

Another strikingly striped volume on my shelf is Northanger Abbey, issued by the Limited Editions Club in 1971. This is the largest Austen I own, ironically as it’s her shortest and in some ways slightest novel. I think a smaller size would be much more suitable, not just for this reason, or to make the book easier to handle and read, but because it would be more appropriate to the story. Northanger Abbey is a light comedy that one wants to keep close for easy enjoyment, not a weighty tome to keep on one’s coffee table for show. The binding of unusual multicolored striped satin, which the publisher chose as worthy to be “draped over the windows of the finest hall of Northanger Abbey,” I would also find more amusing if only there were less of it.

I do greatly appreciate the beautiful custom-made heavy paper and luxurious letterpress printing within. The typeface again is Bell, and its friendly, open feel is better suited to the comedy of Northanger Abbey than to Emma, which is a more serious and mature book. I find the curved ligatures used for “st” and “ct” to be a bit much, however. Especially when they occur in clusters, as with the example above, they give me the impression of a visual hiccup. I’m also not fond of the display type, Fontanesi, used for the title and for initial caps for each chapter. As far as I can discover, it was designed in the 1950s as a “retro” style, unlike the genuine 18th century Bell and Baskerville. I suppose this was meant as a nod to the mock-Gothic pastiche of the novel, but it ventures too far into circus territory for me. As for the swash capitals used for the page headers — who thought this was a good idea? Well, I suppose for 1971 it all seemed quite restrained.

The highlight here is the abundant illustrations, with twelve color plates in addition to the black-and-white drawings scattered throughout each chapter. The artist, Clarke Hutton, has a fluid and lively drawing style that lends a light comic touch, while in the paintings his strong yet subtle use of color and lighting brings the Gothic elements of the story to the fore. Hutton spent the first ten years of his career in stage design, an experience that shows in his dramatic compositions. I’m glad he put his hand to Northanger Abbey, a book that (though I may wish it were two-thirds of the size) I will certainly enjoy for many years.

I hope you’ll join me for the last post in this series, in which I’ll look at Mansfield Park (Folio Society, 1960; reset 1975; 1991 printing), and Persuasion (Heritage Press, 1977).

Summary of book details:

Emma
Published by The Folio Society, London, 2007
Introduction by Deirdre Le Faye
Illustrations by Niroot Puttapipat
Set in Bell
9 x 6.25 inches, 432 pages
Printed on Abbey Wove paper and bound in cloth with Modigliani paper sizes blocked and printed with a design by the artist

More about Puttapipat’s Austen illustrations on Austenprose

* * *

Northanger Abbey
Published by the Limited Editions Club, New York, 1971
Introduction by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Illustrations by Clarke Hutton
Set in Monotype Bell with Fontanesi display
11 x 7.5 inches, 210 pages
Printed on eggshell-finish paper custom-made by the Mohawk Paper Company and bound in
satin-finish fabric with a leather shelfback label printed in gold

Review on Books and Vines (with much better pictures than mine)

Beautiful Books: Picturing Jane Austen, Part One

In my book collecting this year, I went a little nuts. I already owned Jane Austen’s Emma in the most recent Folio Society edition (illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat), but a few months ago the FS published a new edition of Pride and Prejudice with fabulous illustrations by Elena and Anna Balbusso and I just had to have it. Now I would have two oddly assorted Austens on my shelf. What if I could find completely different illustrated editions of each of Austen’s other four novels, breaking the mold of the traditional uniform set? Would the result be pleasingly varied, or just weird?

I had great fun seeking out these different editions, and except for my first two splurges, none of them set me back more than $20. Here follows my take on each book’s binding, typography, and illustrations. I didn’t find any of them completely successful across the board, but there is something that I love about each one, so I would call the project a success.

Going into detail about all six books was making my post too long, so I’ve split it into three parts. Today, I’ll be considering the 2013 Folio Society edition of Pride and Prejudice, and the 1957 Heritage Press edition of Sense and Sensibility.

First up is my new baby, Pride and Prejudice. With a swashy binding design and glittery gold background (hard to capture with my camera — take my word for it, it’s GOLD) this is a book that’s aiming to make a statement. It’s a bit too flashy for me, and I don’t think it suits the book; with all his wealth, Darcy is not one to spend it in an ostentatious way, and Elizabeth is not a princess swanning around in foamy lace and diamond tiaras. I think that a plain matte color would have been more appropriate, and fewer swashes would not hurt.

Fortunately, this flashiness does not extend to the book’s interior. The typography has nothing outstanding about it, but is quiet and respectable, allowing the text to speak without distraction. The eight full-page, full-color illustrations, printed on textured paper, are the main attraction. I wrote last month about the Balbusso sisters and their work, and what I said then definitely applies here: “The Balbusso sisters bring a bold, stylized approach to the problem of illustrating fiction, which is the question of how to bring out both the visual and the psychological aspects of the story, the outer and the inner.” Figures are carefully positioned for maximum dramatic effect, almost like a staged tableau, while contrasting natural forms and visible brushwork lend life and movement. The Balbussos’ formal sense of composition and careful use of color lead the eye through the image to “read” the narrative embedded within.

Through each page conceived as a whole, we see Elizabeth’s discomfort when dancing with Darcy, her archness when playing the pianoforte in his hearing, her consternation on reading his letter. It’s a masterful visualization of a book that has been interpreted in so many ways by so many artists — on page, stage, and screen — that it might seem impossible to look at it afresh. Yet the Balbussos succeed, and brilliantly.

A quite different and very unusual approach was taken by Helen Sewell with her illustrations for the 1957 Heritage Press edition of Sense and Sensibility. She was the only Austen illustrator I found who seriously departed from a naturalistic portrayal, and who did not try to make her subjects look pretty. I find this highly appropriate for Austen, who, however much we may think of her as a creator of colorful costume dramas, was actually writing about some of the uglier sides of human nature, and — unlike her imitators — spent very little time describing what anybody was wearing.

Sewell’s stark, dramatic images, printed in somber dark green ink, are not comforting eye candy. They can be strange and startling, and some readers may dislike them for that reason. I found them a interesting attempt at portraying what few artists have dared to approach: the disquieting truths and uncomfortable emotions that lurk within Austen’s novels. After all, Sense and Sensibility contains some thoroughly unlikeable characters, and its central struggle between passion and prudence is not quite satisfactorily resolved. Sewell’s primitive, monumental figures lend both gravity and a quirky kind of humor to this edition, suitable for what Stella Gibbons in her introduction calls “a tragi-comedy.”

Sense and Sensibility is also outstanding for its typography. The classic Baskerville typeface was chosen for the text, while a engraving-style calligraphic display font elegantly evokes the period. After the first chapter with its monumental drop capital, chapter headings are pleasingly inset just the right amount, with perfectly proportioned small caps for the first few words. Traditional design elements are infused with a clean, modern sensibility, an excellent foil for the illustrations. These are usually incorporated into the text in various ways rather than being segregated on their own separate pages — as with the top spread above, which portrays Edward’s musings about his choice of a profession (or rather lack of one) in graphic form directly below the appropriate text.

Pride and Prejudice also uses Baskerville for its text, an unexceptionable choice, but has boringly centered chapter headings and page numbers, which are enlivened only by some generic swashes (again). It’s a less sophisticated, less subtle design. Although Austen’s heroines are always striving for balance, it’s not an easy path, and does not involve equally weighted choices; Sense and Sensibility‘s asymmetrical, slightly off-kilter page layout reminds us of this, without saying a word.

Sense vs. Pride: Pleasingly asymmetrical vs. boringly centered.

The binding design for Sense and Sensibility could have been more imaginative; I would love to have seen an artistic design rather than a drab printed paper that seems to have nothing to do with the period or the book. However, I love the typography of the spine, which is again simple, elegant, and perfectly proportioned. I was very happy to add this fine book to my library.

I hope you’ll join me again for more in this series. Future posts will cover Northanger Abbey (Limited Editions Club, 1971), Mansfield Park (Folio, 1975/1991), Persuasion (Heritage Press, 1977), and Emma (Folio, 2007).

Summary of book details:

Pride and Prejudice
Published by the Folio Society, London, 2013
Introduction by Sebastian Faulks
Illustrations by Anna and Elena Balbusso
Set in Baskerville with Trajan display
9.5 x 6.25 inches, 352 pages
Printed on Abbey Wove paper and bound in buckram stamped with a design by the artists

Folio Society page
More images on the Ispot

***

Sense and Sensibility
Published by the Heritage Press, New York, 1957
Introduction by Stella Gibbons
Illustrations by Helen Sewell
Set in Baskerville, display type unknown
9.5 x 6.5 inches, 324 pages
Paper unknown; bound in cloth with printed paper sides

Review on AustenOnly

From Austen to Atwood: The art of the Balbusso sisters

Eugene Onegin

The Handmaid’s Tale

The artwork of Anna and Elena Balbusso first caught my eye in the Folio Society catalog, with their stunning illustrations for two very different books, Alexander Pushkin’s classic novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin and Margaret Atwood’s modern dystopian nightmare The Handmaid’s Tale. Then I noticed that they were the cover artists for two other books on my TBR list, The Goblin Emperor and Hild. And then I saw that they were illustrating original fantasy stories for Tor.com, and producing a new edition of Pride and Prejudice for Folio…quite a range right there.

Pride and Prejudice

What all these illustrations have in common is their formal sense of composition, attention to positive and negative space (often making use of silhouettes), and masterly use of color. Often they mix strong, simplified shapes with brushy passages that bring movement and liveliness to the image.

The Too-Clever Fox

The Balbusso sisters bring a bold, stylized approach to the problem of illustrating fiction, which is the question of how to bring out both the visual and the psychological aspects of the story, the outer and the inner. To this end, they play with the juxtaposition of diverse images, frequently combining human figures with elements from the natural world. Their ability to blur the lines between two realms, while keeping each one crystal clear, is one of their most compelling talents.

Hild

Who are these amazing twin illustrators of everything from Austen to Atwood? You can find some answers in this Folio Society interview. (I like the part where they explain how they started working together — it seems that it was just too confusing for their clients to interview identical twins separately.) As they are based in Milan, much of their work has appeared in European publications. This includes several more illustrated editions of classic English novels (such as Northanger Abbey) for a language-learning line, which ironically are not available in English-speaking countries, though I dearly wish they were.

Northanger Abbey

In a time when so many loud and fast-moving images are competing for our attention, it’s refreshing to find artists who can create a perfectly composed page that is arresting in its quietness. I’ll be looking forward eagerly to their next production, whatever it may be.

You can find many more beautiful illustrations by the Balbusso sisters as well as news and information on their website.