illustration

Books and newspapers, like the web, are more than mere repositories for typography. This page highlights some writing about the integration of text and image in Western and other societies.

It covers -

• studies
• zoology and botany
• anatomy
• cartography
• art
• childrens literature
• comics
• architecture and engineering

Some pointers to the use of images in conveying information, such as Edward Tufte's masterful Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, are found in our Design guide.

There is a broader examination in the Images page of our profile on communications revolutions. 

     Studies 

David Bland's A History of Book Illustration: The Illuminated Manuscript & Illustrated Book (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1969) and The Illustration of Books (London: Faber 1962) are useful introductions, as is John Harthan's panoramic The History of the Illustrated Book: The Western Tradition (London: Thames & Hudson 1997). Vito Brenni's Book Illustration & Decoration: A Guide To Research (Westport: Greenwood 1980) is invaluable. Adrian Wilson's concise The Design of Books (San Francisco: Chronicle 1993) looks at the bigger picture.

John Lewis' The 20th Century Book: Its Illustration & Design (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold 1984) is a short but well-illustrated introduction to trends in book design - particularly among fine presses - and illustration last century. Francis Haskell's The Painful Birth of the Art Book (London: Thames & Hudson 1987) is a concise study by a master art historian.

Gordon Ray's The Illustrator & The Book In England from 1790 to 1914 (New York: Dover 1992) complements his Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1988) and Martin Hardie's English Coloured Books (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield 1973). Edward Hodnett's Five Centuries of English Book Illustration (Aldershot: Scolar Press 1988) has a narrower focus.

Ruari McLean's Victorian Book Design & Colour Printing (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1972) is an intelligent study of the intersection between technologies, high culture and markets, complemented by George Landow's Book Illustration in Victorian England site. Philip Hofer's Baroque Book Illustration (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1951) and Janine Barchas' Graphic Design, Print Culture, & the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2003) have a similar value.

Robert Hegel's Reading Illustrated Fiction In Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford Uni Press 1998) is an outstanding study of publishing, technology and readership. James Laspina's The Visual Turn & the Transformation of the Textbook (Mahwah: Erlbaum 1998) opens a new field for research.

William Ivins' superb Prints & Visual Communication (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1953) and Peter Marzio's The Democratic Art: Chromolithography, 1840-1900: Pictures for a 19th-Century America (Boston: Godine 1979) are seminal works. Painted Prints (University Park: Penn State University Press 2002) by Susan Dackerman explores the use of colour in pre-industrial prints. For pointers to the development and impact of illustrated books and the reproduction of images see Geoffrey Wakeman's Victorian Book Illustration: The Technical Revolution (Newton Abbott: David & Charles 1973), Ruari McLean's more expansive Victorian Book Design & Colour Printing (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1972) and Carol Wax's The Mezzotint, History & Technique (New York: Abrams 1990).

The major bibliography is Printmaking & Picture Printing: A Bibliographical Guide to Artistic and Industrial Techniques in Britain 1750-1900 (Oxford: Plough Press 1984) by Gavin Bridson & Geoffrey Wakeman.

Michael Twyman's Breaking the Mould: The First One Hundred Years of Lithography (London: British Library 2002) is an authoritative introduction.

Picturing Science: Historical & Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (Toronto: Uni of Toronto Press 1996) edited by Brian Baigrie, The Artist In the Service of Science (Zurich: The Graphis Press 1973) edited by Walter Herdeg, Brian Ford's Images of Science - a History of Scientific Illustration (London: British Library 1996) and Seeing Is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific & Medical Illustration (New York: NY Public Library 1999) by Jennifer Lee & Miriam Mandelbaum are also recommended.

For statistics see Tufte's writing, noted above, and Graphic Discovery: A Trout in the Milk and Other Visual Adventures (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2004) by Howard Wainer.

Among surveys of particular genres we recommend -

     zoology and botany  

The Animal Illustrated, 1550-1900 (New York: Abrams 1991) by Joseph Kastner & Miriam Gross - a sumptuous collection of b&w and colour plates from zoological books in the collection of the New York Public Library. Their The Animal Illustrated, 1550-1900 (New York: Abrams 1989) is also outstanding.

For those seeking a more comprehensive study, alas not as beautiful, try Natural Science Books in English 1600-1900 (New York: Praeger 1972) by David Knight, author of Zoological Illustration: An Essay Towards A History of Printed Zoological Pictures (Folkstone: Dawson 1977). Ann Blum's Picturing Nature: American 19th Century Zoological Illustration (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1993) is a rich academic study, usefully read in conjunction with Wilfrid Blunt's classic The art of botanical illustration (London: Collins 1950). 

Gavin Bridson's Plant, Animal & Anatomical Illustration in Art & Science: A Bibliographical Guide from the 16th Century to the Present Day (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies 1990) is a comprehensive bibliographical tool.

     anatomy 

The Fabric of the Body: European Traditions of Anatomical Illustration (New York: Oxford Uni Press 1992) is an outstanding study by Keith Roberts & JD Tomlinson, superseding Ludwig Cholant's classic History & Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (New York: Schuman 1945). It is complemented by Robert Herrlinger's History of Medical Illustration, from antiquity to AD 1600 (London: Pitman Medical 1970)

Charles O'Malley's marvellous Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564 (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1964) is an exemplary introduction to illustrating the human animal, notable for its convincing argument that the plates in Vesalius' book were more influential over the next five generations than the author's brave but problematical text.

A sampler of highlights is provided by the University of Toronto's online Anatomia exhibition.

     cartography 

For cartography see the supplementary note elsewhere on this site, highlighting works such as Paul Harvey's The History of Topographical Maps: Symbols, Pictures & Surveys (London: Thames & Hudson 1980) and David Woodward's Five Centuries of Map-Printing (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1975)

     art 

The World Backwards: Russian Futurist Books 1912-16 (London: British Library 1978) by Susan Compton is a more academic study of the explosion of creativity as the ancien regime went under and a worthy complement to When Russia Learned To Read: Literacy & Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1985), a landmark study by Jeffrey Brooks of genre, readership, publishing and bookselling. 

Renee Hubert's Surrealism & the Book (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1988) and Walter Strachan's The Artist & the Book In France (London: Peter Owen 1969) cover the livres d'artiste of last century. Otto Benesch's Artistic & Intellectual Trends From Rubens To Daumier As Shown In Book Illustration (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1969) offers another perspective.

Thomas Boase's Giorgio Vasari: The Man & the Book (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1979) provides an impeccable introduction to the art historian as propagandist.

     childrens literature 

Those wishing to explore the history of children's literature are referred to the five volume Masterworks of Children's Literature (London/New York: Allen Lane/Stonehill 1983) under the general editorship of Jonathan Cott. 

Maurice Sendak's sparkling Caldecott & Co: Notes on Books & Pictures (London: Reinhardt 1989) offers unique commentary on the life and work of his peers by perhaps the leading children's illustrator of our time. For Sendak himself we recommend Selma Lanes' sumptuous The Art of Maurice Sendak (New York: Abrams 80).

Explore From Mother Goose To Dr Seuss: Children's Book Covers 1880-1960 (New York: Chronicle 1999) by Harold Darling and Myth, Magic & Mystery: 100 Years of American Children's Book Illustration (Toronto: Roberts Rinehart 1997) by Michael Heran for the illustrations rather than the text. Barbara Bader's American Picturebooks from Noah’s Ark to the Beast Within (New York: Macmillan 1976) offers a more analytical account.

Frank Eyre's British Children's Books in the 20th Century (London: Longman 1971) and the briefer A History of Children's Book Illustration (London: Murray 1988) by Joyce Whalley & Tessa Chester complement John Barr's Illustrated Children’s Books (London: British Library 1986) which provides a guide to the "golden age" of children’s book illustration (ie up to the 1920's).

Susan Meyer's A Treasury of Great Children's Book Illustrators (New York: Abradale 1987) combines an intelligent text with superb illustrations as she explores publishing and the lives of Dulac, Wyeth, Lear, Potter, Caldecott and others. Cynthia Burlingham's Picturing Childhood: Illustrated Children’s Books from University of California Collections, 1550-1990 (Los Angeles: Uni of California Los Angeles 1997) and William Feaver's When We Were Young: Two Centuries of Children’s Book Illustration (London:Thames & Hudson 1977) have a similar scope. Evgeny Steiner's Stories for Little Comrades: Revolutionary Artists & The Making of Early Soviet Children's Books (Seattle: Uni of Washington Press 1999) is suggestive.

For comics see David Kunzle's two-volume A History of the Comic Strip (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1973 and 1990) and Bonzer: Australian Comics 1900s-1990s (Redhill South: Elgua 1998) edited by Annette Shiell.

     comics 

Among works on comics, elite anzieties and moral panics - offering a perspective on rhetoric about censorship of the net - are Martin Barker's Haunt of Fears (London: Pluto 1984) and Comics: Ideology, Power & the Critics (Manchester: Manchester Uni Press 1989), Masters of American Comics (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 2005) edited by John Carlin, Paul Karasik & Brian Walker, Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium (Jackson: Uni of Mississippi Press 2004) edited by Jeet Heer & Kent Worcester and Fredric Wertham's tendentious Seduction of the Innocent (New York: Rinehart 1954).

Roger Sabin's Adult Comics: An Introduction (London: Routledge 1993) and Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art (London: Phaidon 1996) supplement Kunzle. Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology are Revolutionizing an Art Form (New York: HarperCollins 2001) is of interest in exploring books in the digital environment.

     architecture and engineering 

Architecture in the Age of Printing Orality, Writing, Typography, and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press 2001) by Mario Carpo is a provocative study of the relationship between text, illustration, critical theory and design.

The five volume series dealing with works in the Millard Collection offers an excellent introduction to architectural illustration from the fifteenth to last century. They include French Books: 16th through 19th Centuries (New York: Braziller 1999) by Dora Wiebenson, British Books: 17th through 19th Centuries (New York: Braziller 1999) by Robin Middleton & Nicholas Savage, and Northern European Books Books: 16th to Early 19th Centuries (New York: Braziller 1999) by Harry Mallgrave.

For engineering see in particular Picturing Machines 1400-1700 (Cambridge: MIT Press 2004) by Wolfgang Lefèvre.




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