DOI Heft:
No. 377 (August 1924)
DOI Artikel:Grimsditch, Herbert B.: Mr. John Austen and the art of the book
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21400#0083
MR. JOHN AUSTEN AND THE ART
OF THE BOOK. BY HERBERT B.
GRIMSDITCH, B.A. 000
THERE are almost as many ways of
illustrating books as of writing them,
and almost as many good ways. Whether
a book should be illustrated at all is a moot
point among lovers of literature, but the'
truth surely lies along the middle line
between saying that no book should be
" embellished " (as the old publishers
used to put it) and that all should be so
treated. The first standpoint is arguable,
however, but the latter is manifestly
absurd, for who would dream of decorating
Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason " or
Mill's " On Liberty " i Dismissing, then,
such philosophical works, most histories,
and all works of science (where the plates
and cuts have an informative rather than
an aesthetic purpose), it will be found that
there are still not a few which are not only
suitable but definitely gain by some form
of illustration. 0000
The kinds are largely determined by the
abilities and predilections of the pictorial
artist who takes the work in hand, but
there are certain books in which the
descriptive gifts of the writer are so
eminent as to make any attempt at decora-
tion or illustration an impertinence. For
decoration for e. c. lefroy's
"echoes from theocritus"
by john austen
(Selwyn and Blount)
Vol. LXXXVIII. No. 377.—August 1924.
by john austen
(Selwyn and IMount)
example, I do not think we shall see any
illustrator competent to deal with the
novels of Mr. Conrad or Mr. Hardy, or
that there is any need or justification for
such illustrations. The Wessex Edition
of Mr. Hardy's works contains only very
beautifully reproduced photogravure plates
from photographs of the original scenes,
and how wise is this restriction became
very evident to me when once I saw, in a
book of extracts, an attempt to picture
Eustacia Vye, of " The Return of the
Native." Readers of the book will re-
member that wonderful chapter which
forms perhaps the most powerful de-
scription of a woman in modern English
literature; but the venturesome " artist "
had put Eustacia in a shirt-blouse, with the
high collar and coiffure of twenty years
ago, making ordinary, banal and temporal
a thing which is for all time. 0 0
But among the books which do definitely
gain by decoration are those with a touch
of the grotesque in their composition or
those wherein a vein of light fancy and
picturesqueness is to be found. It is to
these last that Mr. John Austen has chiefly
turned his attention, though he has also
boldly essayed a " Hamlet," and emerged
from the ordeal with conspicuous success.
To have illustrated the most thoughtful,
and in many ways the most difficult, play
in the language without introducing the
least element of incongruity is no small
63
OF THE BOOK. BY HERBERT B.
GRIMSDITCH, B.A. 000
THERE are almost as many ways of
illustrating books as of writing them,
and almost as many good ways. Whether
a book should be illustrated at all is a moot
point among lovers of literature, but the'
truth surely lies along the middle line
between saying that no book should be
" embellished " (as the old publishers
used to put it) and that all should be so
treated. The first standpoint is arguable,
however, but the latter is manifestly
absurd, for who would dream of decorating
Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason " or
Mill's " On Liberty " i Dismissing, then,
such philosophical works, most histories,
and all works of science (where the plates
and cuts have an informative rather than
an aesthetic purpose), it will be found that
there are still not a few which are not only
suitable but definitely gain by some form
of illustration. 0000
The kinds are largely determined by the
abilities and predilections of the pictorial
artist who takes the work in hand, but
there are certain books in which the
descriptive gifts of the writer are so
eminent as to make any attempt at decora-
tion or illustration an impertinence. For
decoration for e. c. lefroy's
"echoes from theocritus"
by john austen
(Selwyn and Blount)
Vol. LXXXVIII. No. 377.—August 1924.
by john austen
(Selwyn and IMount)
example, I do not think we shall see any
illustrator competent to deal with the
novels of Mr. Conrad or Mr. Hardy, or
that there is any need or justification for
such illustrations. The Wessex Edition
of Mr. Hardy's works contains only very
beautifully reproduced photogravure plates
from photographs of the original scenes,
and how wise is this restriction became
very evident to me when once I saw, in a
book of extracts, an attempt to picture
Eustacia Vye, of " The Return of the
Native." Readers of the book will re-
member that wonderful chapter which
forms perhaps the most powerful de-
scription of a woman in modern English
literature; but the venturesome " artist "
had put Eustacia in a shirt-blouse, with the
high collar and coiffure of twenty years
ago, making ordinary, banal and temporal
a thing which is for all time. 0 0
But among the books which do definitely
gain by decoration are those with a touch
of the grotesque in their composition or
those wherein a vein of light fancy and
picturesqueness is to be found. It is to
these last that Mr. John Austen has chiefly
turned his attention, though he has also
boldly essayed a " Hamlet," and emerged
from the ordeal with conspicuous success.
To have illustrated the most thoughtful,
and in many ways the most difficult, play
in the language without introducing the
least element of incongruity is no small
63