Where have all the book illustrators gone? The Independent.

Where have all the book illustrators gone? An article from the newspaper The Independent.

This article discusses the reasons for the lack of illustrated adult novels in the last half a century  It includes controversial opinions like a lack of decent illustrators and introduces the rise of the inner monologue.


'Up until the Fifties and Sixties it wouldn't be unusual for a mainstream publisher to illustrate adult books. '

'Dan Franklin at Jonathan Cape is one of the few British publishers who bucks the trend. "I think a) it's fashion", he says trenchantly. "And b) there aren't that many great illustrators. It's rare you can come across someone who can draw. Even when you're looking for someone to do book jackets, it's hard to find someone who can draw the human figure – it seems to be unfashionable now."

I fully agree with the fashionability of illustration in books being key to its disappearance but the opinion that 'there aren't that many great illustrators' is, I think, another example of fashion. Why do illustrators have to draw the characters to represent what is occurring in the text?

Simon Prosser, publishing director at Hamish Hamilton: It might be", he says, "that illustration is simply unfashionable. I have a strong, deep attachment to books that were illustrated... I remember from my early reading, the classics of natural history, like Izaak Walton and The Natural History of Selborne and they were all illustrated." Which brings us to another issue, the dearth of publishers with some sort of visual grounding.

Does it matter if adult books are all text? Even the greatest enthusiasts wouldn't say you should illustrate everything. You wouldn't wish on any artist the job of drawing much of Virginia Woolf. But the possibility that illustrations could actually illumine writing and draw out elements of a narrative doesn't seem to count for much any more. And as Posy Simmonds, well-known as a graphic novelist as well as illustrator, observes, illustration can do many things for a novel: "There's lots of choice, whether to interpret, decorate, contradict. It can add to or detract from the writing."

On the change in modern literature:

But there is a problem with the nature of modern fiction. As the novelist Piers Paul Read says, "illustrations are best suited to a novel with a strong narrative, that is to say, illustrating an incident – and there are fewer such novels around.

He (Quentin Blake) thinks that the nature of modern fiction is a challenge, but not an insuperable one. "Once novelists got into the interior monologue... that's what spoiled it for illustration", he says. "But there are things you could do that we've lost the habit of doing. There's a wrong assumption that you're going to draw exactly what the text says. But it calls for a bit of thinking. You don't always want to see what the protagonist looks like. Are you drawing surroundings, atmosphere, furniture? There are ways of contributing to novels. Commissioning drawing, I think, is a habit as much as anything. One doesn't want to say everything should be illustrated. But there are moments when something very interesting could be done. We've lost the habit of thinking like that."

The perception of illustration in books as something for children:

Because illustration is now the preserve of children's books, there's a sense that this is where it belongs, with childish things like comics. Or as Quentin Blake says, "there's a feeling it's not quite grown up to have pictures." Posy Simmonds agrees: "there's a sense that pictures are something you grow out of."

On The Resurgance of the illustrated book in the digital platform:

But it's not too soon to write off the possibility of illustration making a return. And curiously enough, it comes from the very development that people darkly assume to be undermining publishing as we know it: digital technology. Kindle makes the reproduction of colour plates far cheaper than now. As Simon Rossiter observes: "Books are more and more in the digital world – there's a real case for making books more special... it would be great to have a special Kindle edition of a novel." Dan Franklin is even more upbeat: "We'll find in the years to come that there's a renewal of illustration in books. Because of Kindle there's a new impulse to make the physical hardback book a more beautiful object. Illustration will be part of that. And when the enhanced e-book is up and running, it will be part of that too."

Do Pictures Pirate Text?

What I liked most about the interviews with Roald Dahl and W.D. Snodgrass was their apparent willingness and enthusiasm to have their work illustrated and engage in the writer/artist relationship. (Which is always nice!)

This paper looking at the role of illustration in the original publications of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island show another side to this willingness. It is quite opposite to our times (as a general rule) but Stevenson wanted his work illustrated because it would 'sell better'. 
There are contemporary examples of books being sold on the credit of their illustrations, the folio society being the main one, however a book aimed at the best-sellers list would generally be wary of a surplus of illustrations due to current conventions where illustration is seen as somewhat childish or archaic.

The people of Stevenson's day meanwhile would be more than happy and attracted to a book rich in the visuals presented here.

"As another medium for circulating the narrative, illustrations also deserve our attention because of their proliferation and Stevenson's preoccupation with them. In his account of writing Treasure Island, Stevenson envisions his map of the island as the first illustration and as resistant to reproduction.
He worries that artists can devalue his text through inaccurate imitation or revision. Both sources reveal that Stevenson values illustration for improving the novel's sales but also is concerned they contribute negatively to it's status as popular fiction."

Stevenson was still obviously concerned with how the dual discourse of text and image would read in regards to his story but also how it would be received publicly. It's interesting that he doesn't want (bad) illustration to devalue his work to a piece of common popular fiction when in contemporary times the same might be said for illustration in adult fiction to lower the expectation of the texts intelligence or age of its readership.

The dangers and difficulties with a writers work being illustrated are discussed here. From the authors point of view his work should to be key in visualising. The illustrations must compliment but not steer the readers reception and response to the text.

As examined earlier (looking at comics) the primary danger when the book is picked up is not only that the illustrations put off a reader but that the book in Stevenson's words, "be skimmed, swift as a racer, the points seized, the story drained of such cheap virtue as it possesses in five minutes instead of in the tedium of several hours of study."
While this can work well in attracting the audience, invoking interest in the mystery ahead, the illustrations should not tell the whole narrative but give a taste:
"There is nothing more delightful than the first skimming of a storybook with pictures: the faces, the costumes, the strange incidents, the clearness and mystery, the story told and still remaining unknown."

'Expert illustrators must remain loyal to the text, while simultaneously adding their own style: "A picture in a story book must be something more than a mere pretty picture...it should narrate. It should be the handmaiden of the text, competing with another accent and the stamp of a different mind."



Stevenson acknowledges a want and need for illustration but is also wary of it 'pirating' the text. "Illustrations contribute to the text's popularity but pressure the author to create the more memorable versions of the characters and events. Of greater concern to Stevenson are poor quality illustrations that fail to convey the essence and depth of the written narrative."

Stevenson's pirates are unique to us in that they are not the swashbuckling pirates we generally meet in story books and blockbuster movies but are are decaying and weather beaten. And yet as the book is illustrated and re-illustrated as time goes by those characters are generalised into a stereotype we can all recognise.

"The emphasis on deterioration suggests Stevenson is self-conscious that he employs a timeworn stereotype. Ironically, however, his pirates’ ruined forms set them apart from their predecessors (and many of their successors), who typically attract readers with their glamorous, sturdy figures. 

The illustrations frequently ignore Stevenson’s thorough character sketches by instead replicating these stereotypes and inscribing them back into the narrative. "

Once more it is down to the author to "create the more memorable versions of characters and events"

That the text is not only illustrated but re-illustrated is an interesting fact in itself. 
The illustrations tend less to draw upon the narrative and Stevenson's descriptions and more upon copying each other and reflecting the fashions of the day.

"The value of otherwise acclaimed work fades, as different artists’ versions of the same crucial scenes, when viewed collectively, appear to lack innovation."

On the illustration below: "The woodcut employs a common approach to representing criminals: whether they feature pirates or highwaymen, among others, such illustrations send a clear message that their subjects are based on a generic figuration of “the outlaw.”

Dahl & Blake

Roald Dahl & Quentin Blake

Its is not often that you hear Roald Dahls name used without the mention of his close friend and illustrator Quentin Blake, such is the iconicness of their relationship and of their visual 'brand'.

What is interesting in this pairing is the complete trust and intuitiveness with which both artist and writer viewed each others work.
"While working on the BFG in 1982, Dahl even altered his own written description of the friendly giant so it fitted with some of the drawings Blake had already made. In the storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl, Donald Sturrock says that Blake was able to almost intuit what Dahl's characters would look like. "Quentin began to realise just how precisely Roald imagined his stories," he writes, "Initially, Dahl had described his character wearing a black hat, apron and large black boots. But when Roald saw Quentin's drawing, he knew at once that the giant needed to look softer and more loveable."

That Dahl changed his narrative after seeing Blake's illustrations in key in discussing how a relationship like this works and that unlike many re-illustrated volumes, illustration had an equal position to the writing:  "Dahl was adamant that his text be full of illustrations, "What was so nice about Roald was that he actually wanted the pictures," Blake recalls on his website. "He didn't like it if there weren't enough."
While this is unfortunately very unique of authors (and more frequent in children's literature) it shows that the narrative and illustrations were intended to be read together, in a single discourse.

Blake on illustrating:
"Blake's job was to convey their many unappealing traits in pictures. (the Twits)
Early on in the story, Dahl describes Mr Twit's beard as being lodged with bits of decaying food. Conveying this in a single portrait image was difficult  so Blake drew a 'magnifying glass' as an in-set illustration, which zoomed in on the hairs and the morsels of sardines, cornflakes and gorgonzola contained within.  It was he says, a question of "how do you enlarge the text slightly, without contradicting it?" Blake added further visual elements too which, while not taken directly from Dahl's text, were pitched as if they were."
An example of extending the narrative, mainly through disgust. Blake could have chosen to draw a portrait of the man purely as a representation of what is written, instead he gives us this close up which acts to heighten our dislike of a foul man through its stomach turning imagery. (Which kids love!)

Quentin Blake on Illustrating The Twits.

Like the collaborations between Thompson and Steadman a brand has been created with the style, typography and interactions between text and image. Both artists are synonymous with each others work.


Blake on his process and collaboration

The game is afoot!

In this research blog for my dissertation I am aiming to address the lack of illustrations within contemporary adult fiction, the reasons for this and to decide for myself as an illustrator and avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction if this is something that should, by rights, be more prevalent in current literature.

The decline of book illustration (overlooking children's literature) appears to have been ignored and taken as a passing of the ages, of old world traditions and almost historic ways. I'd like to look both into why this is in the publishing industry, why as a culture we no longer question its lack and present a case for the renewal of the illustrated book in the contemporary best sellers lists of 'real grown up' literature.

The suggested reasons are varied and controversial. Lack of decent illustrators, a taboo on 'books with pictures in' and the rise of the digital age (Kindle, iPad & audiobooks).

Most importantly I intend to look at how the illustrations in a book modify your perceptions and responses to the text and specifically, the story. What are the pros and cons towards having illustrations sat amongst your text? Does it distract or enhance?

Personally I'm hoping my research weighs heavily in favour of of the illustrated book but I am not adverse to accepting the difficulties and dangers of illustrating prose or even perhaps the realisation that illustration has little to no place in the modern fiction book.

Who knows! 

The game is afoot!