Serials to Graphic Novels

by Catherine J Golden

  Foremost, this chapter looks across illustrative periods within the arc of the Victorian illustrated book to examine how the creative vision of the caricaturists underpins the achievement of some Sixties artists who fleshed out inventive caricature designs to suit popular taste. In Barnard’s drawings for David Copperfield (DC, 1850) in the Household Edition of Dickens’s work, there is “just enough resemblance to the figures created by H. K. Browne to save you a shock” (337), according to the Dalziel Brothers (who helped select illustrators for the Household Edition). Re-illustrating Oliver Twist (OT, 1838) for the Household Edition, James Mahoney recalls Cruikshank’s theatrical staging and the look of many characters, particularly Oliver and Fagin. We witness this same kind of revision of the caricature tradition in Alice in Wonderland: to appeal to middle-class consumers of the 1860s, John Tenniel refashioned Carroll’s caricature-style illustrations in Alice’s Adventures Under Ground by adding domestic interiors and landscape details and realistically recreating Carroll’s social caricatures.

  “Paper, Printing, and Bookbinding”: Books on Display at the Great Exhibition

  The Sixties style of illustration arose in a decade that witnessed an unprecedented international exhibition of innovation and commodity culture at which England was at the fore.7 The Great Exhibition held in London from 1 May to 15 October 1851 put on display a Victorian aesthetic that frames the contributions of Sixties illustrators, who carried artistic standards into book illustration. Illustrated books with choice bindings were exhibited along with technological, military, economic, and aesthetic wonders of culture and industry. Over 14,000 exhibiters from around the globe showcased innovation in a glass-andiron building in Hyde Park—dubbed a “Crystal Palace”—an edifice that itself stood for modernization, owing to the invention of cast plate glass as recently as 1848.8 Over six million visitors from England and other nations came to see fancy goods, geological displays, industrial machinery, new inventions like an envelope-folding machine, fine jewels, agricultural specimens, military artillery, furniture, carriages, and books from England, Europe, and colonial holdings.9

  The catalogue for the Great Exhibition is a massive three volumes entitled Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (ODIC). Section 3, class 17, of the second volume is devoted to “Paper, Printing, and Bookbinding,”10 which includes books. Introducing this section, Robert Ellis privileges the Holy Scriptures, “exhibited in one hundred and fifty different languages—a noble evidence of the highest application of industry to the enlightenment and welfare of mankind” (ODIC 2: 538); however, in the following sentence, Ellis acknowledges, “Beautiful specimens of the bookbinder’s art are likewise shown” (538).11 Decoration infused the entire exhibition including the displays of books. Manufacturers entered books “mainly for their bindings, not for their contents” (64), as Asa Briggs notes in Victorian Things. With the exception of the entry by the Religious Tract Society (entry 154), the manufacturers’ narratives in “Paper, Printing, and Bookbinding” focus on aesthetics, even for ecclesiastical literature. William Jones Cleaver, a London manufacturer, describes the material beauty of the Bible in the following narrative: “Oak and glass case, containing an assortment of Bibles and books of Common Prayer, and a selection of other books in ancient and modern bindings. Exhibited for the colours of the leather, general design, and workmanship” (2: 552).

  Bibles are foremost among the “[b]eautiful specimens” (ODIC 2: 538) on display for their design and workmanship. J. & J. Leighton, a London manufacturer, highlights one of its most “splendid” (539) editions, the late King William IV’s Royal Bible, which the manufacturer bound for His Highness in Morocco leather from a design by Luke Limner (see fig. 24). The accompanying full-page illustration in the catalogue (opposite 539) shows the cover and sides embossed with royal emblems and nautical imagery “in honour of the sailor king” (539); the book clasps take the shape of anchors and ships’ cables. Manufacturer J. & J. Leighton presents the Bible to advantage: “reflectors” (mirrors) show the back, end, and fore-edge of the magnificent binding. From this manufacturer’s narrative and the illustration of King William IV’s Bible, we learn about the life of the book’s royal owner, social class, and aesthetic taste. A Scottish designer, W. Clark, likewise features exquisite bindings of Bibles and other books including “Chalmers’ History of Dunfermline, 8vo, full-bound in red Turkey Morocco, hand-tooled in gold and silver on back and sides, and with silver and satin linings” (546). The eight volumes have rich leather bindings adorned with precious metals and expensive fabric trim. These books manufactured by J. & J. Leighton, W. Clark, and other bookmakers were affordable only to the upper reaches—or in J. & J. Leighton’s case to royalty—but the bindings garnered appreciation from all social classes. Members of the working class regularly frequented the Great Exhibition, buying less expensive tickets for off-peak entrance times.

  Figure 24. “The Late King William IV’s Royal Bible.” Illustration in the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, 1851.

  Many books on display were illustrated, and manufacturers’ narratives make pointed references to illustrations. James Wild, a London bookmaker, exhibited atlases with as many as sixty-seven full-colored maps (2: 549). Clark & Davidson, a Scottish manufacturer, references a “Pictorial Bible, bound in wood boards, ornamented with arabesques” (546). This is one of many pictorial Bibles extravagantly illustrated with vignettes, pictorial capitals, tailpieces, and full-page engravings.12 Robert Neil, an Edinburgh publisher, directs attention to “the etchings of three churches—top, St. John’s, Edinburgh; bottom, St. Giles’, Edinburgh; front, St. Mungo’s, Glasgow” (544) that are printed on the satin flyleaves of an imperial quarto Bible. Moreover, this manufacturer describes a Morocco display case “so designed that the Bible may be fully seen, without handling or removing it from the cushion at the bottom of the case” (544). In context of the Great Exhibition, a finely bound book was a material object to be appreciated from every vantage point.

  Books from other nations also were on exhibit. Egypt submitted a prize-winning collection of 165 volumes in Turkish, Arabic, and Persian published at Bulaq, the first Egyptian printing press.13 The Bulaq Press, established in 1822 in the port of Cairo, arose in response to ruler Muhammed Ali Pashi’s aim for military expansion and education; as Peter Colvin notes, Ali Pashi’s “reign had turned Cairo into the publishing and intellectual center of the Arab World” (259). This collection of leather-bound works ranging from literature and history to military techniques won Egypt an honorable mention in the Great Exhibition. Significant is Colvin’s observation: “it would appear that they were exhibited primarily for their bindings, which may be what gained them their honorable mention” (257). By 1851, books were artful objects.

  Other prize-winning book collections came from Saxony and Austria. F. A. Brockhaus of Saxony received a medal for “‘his collection of 356 volumes, the whole printed at his own establishment in the year 1850’” (qtd. in Briggs 65). The Austrian section features a grand Gothic bookcase from carved oak designed to house a collection of books as a gift from the Emperor of Austria to Queen Victoria (Briggs 64–65). The Viennese manufacturer Carl Leistler & Son notes that “The design for the Queen’s bookcase was made by Bernardo di Bernardis, architect, assisted by Mr. Joseph Kramer, of Prague” (ODIC 3: 1039). The full-page illustration of the bookcase with its Gothic arches, fretwork, and inlaid design reveals an awareness that beautiful books needed high quality bookcases to display them.

  The Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue itself merits observation for its lavish number of representational-style illustrations; it is a picture gallery of decorative objects and innovations of Victorian England and foreign lands.14 Compilers of the catalogue call it an “illustrated book of this kind” (1: vi). As the title indicates, the catalogue is both a “descriptive” and an “illustrated” book, and the illustrations, particularly those of items from other countr
ies, align this publication with travel literature, a genre that was growing in popularity in the mid-nineteenth century. Aware that “these pages will be read in many lands long after the Exhibition shall have become a matter of history” (viii), Ellis, author of the preface, notes that the compilers designed it “to serve as a lasting memorial of the splendid collection to which it professes to be the exponent” (vi). The word “memorial” indicates the significance of this illustrated book to future generations as does Ellis’s remark that this three-volume catalogue provides a “record of the most varied and wonderful collection of objects ever beheld” (viii) to be cherished long after “the great spectacle it illustrates will pass away” (vii).

  The plentiful black-and-white and occasional color illustrations in the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue display an unprecedented collection of material objects. The title-page design, an encircled crown and shield, is by John Tenniel, a recognized Sixties illustrator. The three volumes of the catalogue include over thirty views of the Crystal Palace’s construction and interior and hundreds of illustrations of the wondrous objects and inventions on exhibition. The manufacturers’ narratives transmit details of the fancy goods trade and technological and industrial innovation. The pictures in the catalogue, if read along with the narratives, allow us to glimpse why a noted visitor like Charlotte Brontë describes the Great Exhibition as “such a Bazaar or Fair as eastern Genii might have created. It seems as if magic only could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the Earth … with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvelous power of effect” (J. R. V. Barker, Letters 324).

  The Coalbrook Dale Company of Shropshire includes a full-page drawing entitled “Fountain and Park Gates in Cast Iron” (see fig. 25) that is a spectacle to behold. The narrative includes intricate design details that the picture, in turn, realizes with near photographic precision. According to the manufacturer, the bronzed cast-iron entrance consists “of a pair of principal gates, and two side gates, hung on iron pillars of new construction, combining lightness and strength, having finials, emblematic of Peace, supporting an insular crown; also on either side an ogee fencing, terminating in stag’s-head vases, suggestive of a park” (2: 659). “[A]s if [by] magic,” reader-viewers of the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue are transported into this charming illustration. Inside the crowned gates sits an enormous ornamental cast-iron fountain after “Cupid and the Swan” (2: 659). The waters rise high from the fountain, nearly touching the trees just outside the gates. The frontage of this scene anticipates a theme park. Posed, too, in the illustration is an exhibition goer, a genteel Victorian lady dressed in a bonnet and full ruffled cape and gown admiring this spectacle of technical innovation and beauty. Moreover, the display is sixty feet long, giving a sense of the enormity of the Great Exhibition as well as this particular exhibit.

  Small representational illustrations in the catalogue are equally fascinating. In class 22, “General Hardware, Including Locks and Grates,” manufacturer Chubb & Son provides several small pictures including a drawing of a fireproof safe (sketched to show the “form and interior” [2: 663]); a specimen of an ornamental Gothic lock, showcasing new technology crafted with an historical design; and the Koh-i-Noor diamond case with Queen Victoria’s precious diamond inside it. The case, a curious looking object that resembles a birdcage, “contains an arrangement for elevating and depressing the diamond without unlocking”; moreover, the manufacturer maintains, “It is considered to be impossible to pick the lock or obtain an entrance into this receptacle” (663).

  Figure 25. “Fountain and Park Gates in Cast Iron.” From the Coalbrook Dale Company. Illustration in the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, 1851.

  Perhaps most compelling are the illustrations of objects from foreign countries—Sèvres china from France, water jugs from Egypt, an elaborate leather saddle from Tunis, a carved table from China, and Grecian Palicar attire for men. A carefully executed illustration accompanying an entry by Saris & Rengos of Athens pictures a man wearing the local costume, which includes a tunic embroidered in gold, a fez with a gold tassel, a fermeli (an upper jacket), a pair of gaiters, silk garters, a silk sash, shirt, trousers, and Morocco leather shoes (3: 1406). Saris & Rengos uses the narrative to describe improvements in embroidering (for example, “The art of embroidering, both in silk and gold, has of late been considerably improved in Greece”); the narrative also points to the higher quality of the leather used for the manufacturing of shoes. The accompanying picture of the richly clad male figure set against a Grecian landscape seemingly transports the viewer to Athens (3: 1406); we can even see the Acropolis and the hills in the background as well as the details of stitching and ornamentation on the costume. By 1851, trains and steamships made distances more surmountable, but only for those of means. This picture is but one of hundreds in the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue that provided Victorian middle-class viewers a voyeuristic opportunity to travel to foreign and exotic lands and to see the wonders of all nations.

  The Artful Book in the Victorian Drawing Room

  “The crowds at the Crystal Palace … spurred consumption, even if the objects on display were not for sale” (154), as Elizabeth Helsinger advances in “Rossetti and the Art of the Book.” The Great Exhibition stimulated an appetite for material objects that resembled the spectacular items on display. In addition, periodicals such as The Art Journal—produced in 1851 to bring fine art into the Victorian home through wood engravings15—show that by the very start of the decade, bookbinding and wood engraving were considered forms of fine art. “For middle-class Victorians in the 1850s and 60s,” notes Helsinger, “the object forms of art and literature were a focus of consuming interest. New technologies and materials helped make decorative covers and illustrated books widely available and much less expensive” (149). As more middle-class Victorians could afford to buy books with attractive bindings and quality illustrations to adorn their libraries and parlors, purchasing a book for its binding—not for its contents—became a source of humor.

  In Library Jokes and Jottings (1914), Henry Coutts includes the following epigraph in his chapter entitled “Books as Furniture”: “‘No furniture so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word’” (118). Coutts recalls a trick played on a millionaire with “literary pretensions” who viewed books simply as a means of furnishing his estate; the foolish man falls prey to a savvy bookseller, who rebinds a large stock of remainders of one single third-rate novel “in gorgeous bindings, lettered with the names of authors and titles of classical and modern standard works and duly despatched. The millionaire is exceedingly proud of his library, and it is very unlikely that he will ever discover the trick that was played upon him” (121–22). In a later chapter, Coutts tells of a visitor at a seaside resort who complains to a librarian that she cannot read a particular book because its binding does not match her outfit: “‘It may be a very nice book, but look what an atrocious cover it has; haven’t you one bound in saxe-blue to match my costume? I really couldn’t take a scarlet-covered book on to the promenade’” (147).16

  Consumers often bought whole collections of books bound in saxe blue or another handsome color to decorate their libraries and drawing rooms. George Eliot’s Mr. Tulliver of The Mill on the Floss (1860) likewise purchases a collection of books for its covers, not its contents. The set includes Daniel Defoe’s The Political History of the Devil (1726)—not suitable reading for his daughter, Maggie—but Tulliver buys it because “‘They was all bound alike—it’s a good binding, you see—and I thought they’d be all good books’” (18). Tulliver thinks he can judge a book’s worth by its cover “in an age where more volumes entered into circulation (or gathered dust on more shelves) than ever before” (Price 2). Elizabeth Gaskell describes such a costly book gathering dust on a library shelf in the home of a prosperous mill owner, Mr. Carson, in Mary Barton (1848). The Carsons rarely open �
�the great large handsome Bible, all grand and golden, with its leaves adhering together from the bookbinder’s press, so little had it been used” (435).17 The Carson family Bible with its gold binding and fully gilt edges recalls the illustrated Bibles on display for their sumptuous covers at the Great Exhibition of 1851.18

  At the same time as books with beautiful bindings became art objects to decorate one’s home, illustrations within books became collectible art worth framing. Many nineteenth-century prints on the market today are the handicraft of collectors who cut them out of illustrated books and periodicals.19 Publishers and collectors often separated illustrations from the books that they were designed to accompany to show them “to their best advantage,” as Robert Meyrick notes; “If a painting demanded a canvas, an engraving should at least warrant a folio…. Publishers of the 1860s were quick to respond to this perception and to produce vehicles showcasing the exquisite works of art they had commissioned” (180). One prime example of this kind of artistic elevation of illustration is folio publication, such as The Cornhill Gallery, first published in 1864 and then reprinted in 1865.20 This volume of 100 engravings includes 28 illustrations by Sir John Everett Millais for Anthony Trollope’s Framley Parsonage (1861) and The Small House at Allington (1864) and other illustrations by, among others, Fred Walker, Frederick Leighton, and George Du Maurier. Smith, Elder and Co. worked closely with the Dalziels to produce fine woodblock engravings of works previously printed from electrotype casts, resulting, as noted in the preface, “‘in a style which will place them in their proper rank of Works of Art’” (qtd. in Reid 12).21 Akin to a book of paintings, the folio printed on fine paper included little to no textual accompaniment, even though the engravings were actually illustrations to serials and stories published in The Cornhill Magazine. Smith, Elder and Co.’s capitalization of “Works” and “Art” in the preface also speaks to the publisher’s motive: to convince potential buyers that quality illustrations by recognized artists be appreciated and bought as fine art. Priced at just one guinea, The Cornhill Gallery was affordable art for burgeoning middle-class consumers, and its republication just one year after its original printing attests to the volume’s success.