Early Victorian Illustrated Books: Britain, France and Germany, 1820‐1860

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Early Victorian Illustrated Books: Britain, France and Germany, 1820‐1860", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 1, pp. 74-76. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710722131

The author makes clear that his concern in this book is “not with illustrations in the strict sense of pictorial aids to the understanding of a text” but “with wood‐ and steel‐engraving and with lithography as the decorative rather than the explanatory adjuncts of letterpress”. Buchanan‐Brown has written studies of George Cruikshank (1980) and Phiz or Hablot Knight Browne (1978), and of the illustrations of Thackeray (1979) and is an independent scholar. He picks up Percy Muir's contention (in Victorian Illustrated Books, revised edition, 1989) that, while the illustrative work of Thomas Bewick is widely known, and the other point that the 1860s are recognized as the heyday of Victorian book design, what happened in‐between, “post‐Bewick”, is less known. This new book aims to fill the gap.

Buchanan‐Brown sets himself other tasks, too, among them (a) to try to define exactly what is an illustrated book (topographical prints brought together, hors‐texte embellishments, illuminated books), (b) to connect up discussions about illustrators and artists with printers and publishers and tease out the trade and professional character of their relationships, and (c) to probe into what “Romantic” book design and illustration were. He does this, and especially the last, by concentrating on Britain during the period, and drawing on France and Germany for influences and evidence regularly. This is important for anyone thinking of buying the book, because the title implies equal treatment of all three cultures. It also rather disguises how the author at times is keen as much to separate off the cultures (as parallel) rather than symbiotic. The net result is a success, with a convincing narrative arc, persuasively arranged evidence, generally well‐coordinated illustration, and sound selection of key themes and issues. The book is well‐written and excellently produced, and for the price value‐for‐money.

A prologue provides a snapshot of the social and technological background, and implies that other sources can offer more. The argument moves into France, then Germany, then back to Britain (with publishers, then artists), and finally an assessment (called “achievement and decline”) where strands come together, above all on Romantic book design (pp. 244‐60), leading to an elegiac “end of era” in the style of Ruari McLean's “end of an epoch” in his Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing (Faber and Faber, second edition, 1972). McLean and Hunnisett (1980) (on steel‐engraving in England) are clear models, and not just sources, for this new book (for example, Hunnisett's chapter structure on steel engravers, artists, the book, and publishers), even though Buchanan‐Brown has produced something new. Inevitably, works by Twyman (1998) and Wakeman (1975), Engen (1985) and Houfe (1978) and Hürlimann (1967) come into the frame as well (and are cited). With its focus on Britain, it follows that the book draws on French and German sources but chooses not to make them its major concern, a factor that has attracted criticism from scholars wanting a different bias. Yet it is what it is.

The chapter on France reminds the reader of the common interest in wood‐, copper‐, and steel‐engraving throughout Europe, connects up illustration with publishing and literature in the work of Devéria and Johannot “the artist of the French livre romantique” and Scott, and argues that fashion was as strong as was technology on changes in book design. Cross‐fertilization between French and British publishers, engravers, and illustrators showed itself in many forms, including children's and travel books, and comes through in the work of Thackeray and Crowquill, Vizetelly and Owen Jones. Turning then to Germany, Buchanan‐Brown connects up the emergence of professional illustrators with an artistic revival (that had strong cultural and religious elements). He picks out the work of Otto Speckter and Ludwig Richter as particularly influential. Painters like von Cornelius and Retzsch and Neureuther (influenced by Flaxman) give us what became characteristics of German Romantic book design – “the broad vertical panels of decoration in the margins and the stick border” (p. 99). Buchanan‐Brown reproduces illustrations that show these things clearly, bringing out works like the Nibelungenlied (1840) as high points for wood‐engraving. This and other works set a style that was to influence British book design and illustration for years to come. For anyone using the book for exemplars, and unable to get access to the originals, Buchanan‐Brown's book is particularly useful. Many sources are British Library sources and this is noted.

The choice of British publishers – John van Voorst, Longman and Murray, Tilt and Bogue – and artists – Harvey and Gilbert, Birket Foster and Cruikshank, Crowquill and Leech, Phiz and Doyle – for the central chapter of the book is sensible and unsurprising. It would be odd not to see them there. In some cases a “British style” developed distinct from anything continental. Tilt and Bogue developed a business based on prints and their “embellished” works, like Harvey's Milton of 1843 demonstrate a strong “French connection”. Harvey's The Arabian Nights of 1840 is perhaps the outstanding “Romantic” British book of its period, a part‐publication from Charles Knight (itself of interest) with integrated vignettes. Buchanan‐Brown can be critical, noting the sentimentality of Birket Foster, some subtle tonality in John Gilbert, wanting us to re‐evaluate the etching of C.W.Cope and the work of John Franklin, and recognizing the changing relationships between illustrators and engravers, authors, and publishers. Something new on Phiz will provoke readers to turn to another author, Lester (2006).

Probably the most interesting – and contentious – aspect of the book is what Buchanan‐Brown says about Romantic book design, and the extent to which he convincingly weaves his three‐culture case around it. The text‐image balance is, rightly, key to such design, shows itself in many forms and media, in genres like topographical books (often albums of prints), above all where illustration is integrated in the text. The rule border is important to such design, and many examples are provided. The “end of era” argument takes the form of a decline in Romanticism by the 1850s, making Doré “the last Romantic book illustrator”, moving into mass production, shifts in wood colour‐printing with Edmund Evans (and from there on to chromo‐lithography), in Buchanan‐Brown's view a coarsening of sensibility, an emphasis on surface attraction rather than essentials.

A lack of warmth emerges in the super‐calendered gloss paper and embossed cloth bindings on the 1860s, with cost driving technology, and a zeal to educate and other social and cultural changes changing book design. A topic for another book and full of debatable points. A work, then, as a whole that is attractive and valuable, with the challenge, as you move more and more into it, of raising lots of questions. Early Victorian Illustrated Books has a timeless quality, putting it squarely in the tradition of McLean and the others. The focal personalities are well‐chosen, the evidence about influence generally convincing, the insights into Romantic book design persuasive, and format and writing attractive. Some special pleading, a need to pick out elite from popular publishing, a challenging mixture of different media (wood, copper, steel), hints about relationships between illustrators and publishers. Integrating illustration and text, in whatever style, does not necessarily make a “Romantic” book, and may at times, when it is absent, not necessarily turn a book into an illuminated or embellished album, and these are issues left in the mind after finishing the book.