In an 1867 article entitled “Book Illustration,” Charles Dickens complains that contemporary illustrators no longer focus on the dramatic scenes of the text. Instead, illustrators depict undramatic and unimportant scenes. Dickens claims that this change can be explained by an undue pursuit of illustrations as independent works of art:
Their [the illustrators’] ambition seems to be confined to the desire of producing a beautiful work of art. The modern illustrator, when a book is put into his hands, proposes to himself–judging by results–rather to produce a set of drawings which shall redound to his own credit, than to help the author whose work he illustrates, to make himself understood. The consequence is, that he ordinarily chooses those situations which are the tamest and least dramatic, because they fetter him less, and lend themselves more readily to his purpose of producing a complete and agreeable picture, than those more stirring situations which both the author and the public would have liked to see illustrated.
(Dickens 151–2; see also Pantazzi 589–91)
In contrast to the tendencies he identified in the illustrations from the 1860s (which we could consider being the early seeds of the Arts and Crafts movement), Dickens’ ideal illustrations should portray dramatic and important literary scenes. An example of this would be Dickens’ collaborative work with the illustrator Phiz (Hablot K. Browne) for The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (see below).
Works Cited
Dickens, Charles. “Book Illustration.” All the Year Round, no. 433, August 10, 1867, pp. 151–55.
Pantazzi, Sibylle. “Author and Illustrator: Images in Confrontation.” A History of Book Illustration: 29 Points of View, edited by William A. Katz, Scarecrow Press, 1994, pp. 585-600.
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