Module Information

Pictures that tell stories have for centuries been the mainstay of the European figurative tradition. This module examines the illustrated book in Britain since 1800 through an analysis of the work of key illustrators. It considers books in relation to their social, historical, art historical and technological contexts. The relationship between image, text and methods of production will also be discussed. The module follows a broadly chronological framework beginning with Thomas Bewick's refinement of the wood engraving that, together with rapid technological developments and increased literacy, saw the physical appearance of the illustrated book change as production grew from a handcraft into an industry. Cheap books immediately opened up access to fine prints for all and, as conveyors of information, these were of great significance in public self-education.
By the 1860s, established easel painters such as Millais, Burne Jones, Hunt, Leighton and Sandys were illustrating for inexpensive wide-circulation periodicals. Their pious scenes of family life, unrequited love, deathbed melodramas and idealized visions of medieval chivalry tell us much about the codes, conduct and aspirations of middle-class Victorians. Opposed to such mechanization and mass production, William Morris established the Kelmscott Press in 1891 to hand print books like medieval craftsmen and prove that 'a work of utility might also be a work of art'. The twentieth-century private presses such as Golden Cockerel and Gregynog were a legacy of Morris,s ideology. The propriety of Kelmscott books found their antithesis, however, in the erotic and often scandalous illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley. Richly patterned, elaborate in their artificiality and steeped in the frustrations of male sexual desire, they sum up Fin de Siecle decadence.
With the British Empire at its height, London became a magnet for international artists who came to work for the great publishing houses. Frenchman Edmund Dulac and Kay Neilson from Denmark joined indigenous talent such as Beatrix Potter and Arthur Rackham whose bizarre anthropomorphized tree roots and absurd-looking gnomes would influence generations of illustrators from Walt Disney to Chris Riddell. Potter and Rackham were the first illustrators to see their watercolours photographed and reproduced by means of the new colour halftone process that has for over a century has remained the principal means of printing illustrated books. The closing decades of the twentieth century witnessed the increasing internationalization of the illustrated book market. The likes of Charles Keeping, Maurice Sendak and Chris Riddell demonstrate the continuing importance of book illustration, its potential to entertain, provoke thought and delight.

1. Approaching the Study of Illustration. Module overview and assessments explained. Illustration in Britain before 1800.
2. Thomas Bewick and the Commercial Illustrated Book.
3. The Golden Age of British Book Illustration: The 1860s.
4. The Victorian Soap: Illustrations for Periodicals of the 1860s.
5. The Refinement of Colour: from Colour Wood Engraving to Halftone.
6. Fin de Siècle I: Aubrey Beardsley and the Art Nouveau Book.
7. Fin de Siècle II: William Morris and Private Press Historicism.
8. British Private Presses from the Vale to Golden Cockerel, 1890-1940.
9. Hands On: a feast of rare books at the National Library of Wales gathered together in your honour (2 hours).
10. From Boxwood and Zinc Plate to Cellulose: Commercial Illustrated Books 1920-1950.
11. Continuity and New Departures: Illustration since 1950.