The Maiden Feeds The Tree Beasts & The Whores' Asylum

This illustration for 'The house in the wood', a Grimm tale is highly stylised, "It is heavy and naturalistic: there is no hint in the style or treatment that this action is the turning point of the story, or that the maiden's actions will have magical results."
The heavy black frame and archaic style of the illustration distances the reader and is enhanced by the placing of the elaborate caption. 

"Even though the main lines are curve...the overall effect is one of formality and restraint, to match the writing. The result of this is to suggest distance and separation  the rhetoric of the image is a constant reminder that it is an aesthetic construct, and no effort is made to engender imaginative involvement in the child reader."


As a contemporary audience we are fully aware of the age of the illustration, which in turn makes us age the text similarly. This changes the reading experience. No doubt the style of the text(thou, thee) would have alerted us to its age as we read it, but having the image present changes the way we perceive it from the start or even before we read it. As to whether this changes our perception of the text for better or for worse is largely subject to personal opinion, but the fact that we even address it is, in itself, a distraction.

It is interesting therefore to look at contemporary novels that use illustration styled from there archaic eras for the covers or even inside of their books. 

'The Whores' Asylum'

A recent example of this I found is a book called 'The Whores' Asylum by Katy Darby', which sounds charming but there you go.
 The novel is set in the 1880's and so is based in the era that 'Sherlock Holmes' would have been detecting in. 

The author writes;  "..the thing is, it was Sidney Paget's wonderful illustrations for the stories when they originally appeared in the Strand Magazine that really brought Holmes, Watson et al to life. And what would be more appropriate for a Victorian novel than an exquisite series of bookplates to accompany the narrative?"

On aproaching her publisher, "I suggested, in a throwaway fashion, that it would be amazing to have some pictures of key scenes scattered through the text – it's a typically 'period' thing, so would be very much in the spirit of the novel."

"All I had to do was go through the story and find some of the most visually dramatic scenes, then sit back and wait for them to be turned into fantastic Pagetesque black-and-white line drawings. I also had to comb the text for physical descriptions of the various characters..."

I find it interesting that here the author is suggesting scenes to be illustrated and I guess a discourse continues between author and illustrator during this process.

"I'm not one of those writers who has a crystal-clear picture of their characters in their head from the outset; I tend to build them up from the inside out....Who did he look like? Himself. What did that mean? I didn't quite know – but I was aching to find out.

...The above, at any rate, was how my characters appeared to me and therefore in the text – but I didn't set to writing with a gallery of detailed portraits floating before my eyes. I was open to however the artist decided to render the people in my book, because I love having my work illustrated. There's something about seeing your characters afresh through somebody else's eyes that's completely intriguing and revelatory."

That the author herself doesn't have a clear view of the characters in mind is a slight relief. I am not sure I ever have a solid image of a characters face in mind when I read a novel, I tend to characterise them by just that, their character. (This is not helping my argument one bit!)

However I then question her decision to ask for the characters to be illustrated, yes like she sates it is 'intriguing and revelatory' (and its the result I'm routing for), but that is only to her. A reader fresh to the text will not know the characters before the conception of the illustrations but will read them both simultaneously. Does this mean that their perceptions of the characters differ to that which the author 'saw' them as. Or is she happy for this inferation since she herself doesn't have a 'crystal-clear picture' of the character in her head? 

"I was sent roughs of seven key scenes from the book, ranging from a formal ball to a strangulation, via a duel, a naked lady being painted, a prostitute soliciting in a dodgy tavern, and a masked orgy. Lucky Max (illustrator) had to deal with some more of my authorial objections as I pointed out that the tart looked too prosperous, the artist probably shouldn't be wearing a cliché – sorry, beret – and the duellist holding a gun in his left hand is actually seriously injured on that side. However, in my defence, the reason I was so pernickety about the content of the illustrations is that each one is on the facing page to the scene actually described – so the reader having just read about one character's arm getting maimed would definitely be puzzled to see it whole again in the picture opposite."

Here the author makes sure the illustration does not distort the text in performing a major narrative departure and in so distract and thus distance the reader.

In this example of a contemporary novel illustrated in a bygone style it is the authors wish that the readers experience of the book be been highly influenced by the illustrations. She wanted the book to feel like a classic, like a Sherlock Holmes. Therefore this is a case of using illustration to distance for a specific reason, for a specific experience.

Katy Darby's full account of her relationship with the illustrator can be found here on her blog.