The Victorian Illustrated Book (Victorian Literature and Culture Series)

Rating:
Summary: Glimpses of yesterday
Review: When you think of Victorian Britain, what images come to mind? Well, those of sepia toned photographs from 1850 onwards. But invariably for most, illustrations from musty old tomes also arise. The first country with mass literacy still found cartoons and other illustrations useful in many books. Remember that for them, the cost of including these was far greater than for a modern publisher. The plummetting cost of images since the 19th century should not blind us to this. Thus, by inference, when you see the wonderfully chosen examples in this book, the very existence, as independently decided by different authors and publishers over the space of a century, gives some clue as to the value the illustrations were perceived to have.

Maxwell shows some very traditional religious illustrations that explicitly hark back to medieval monasteries. But he also shows illustrations, especially by Aubrey Beardsley, form the late 19th century, that would not look out of place in today's New Yorker. The clean, clear cuts of Beardsley eerily anticipate by a mere 20 years those of Heath Robinson and the associated, minimalist Art Deco architecture. By contrast, the book has other illustrations from early in the 19th century that unmistakably are redolent of the century that just passed on.

Nice.