Tag Archives: Book Illustration

Introduction, Twitter launch and Call for Contributions

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Hello and a very happy New Year to all members of the Romantic Illustration Network! My name is Katie Snow and I’m pleased to be the new web lead for the RIN. Lots has been happening behind the scenes at RIN, and in this post I’ll introduce myself, share our new Twitter account, and encourage submissions to the blog.

My work is best described as a mix of medical and art history; I use visual sources to explore attitudes towards bodies, gender and sexuality. At present, my research is focused on how the body – and especially its intimate parts – are politicised in British caricature. I’m writing my first monograph, Satirising the Breast, having been awarded a PhD on representations of breasts in Georgian satirical prints in the summer of 2021. I’m looking forward to seeing how my involvement with the RIN shapes my project, and would love to hear from members with similar interests.

For those of you who are active on social media, we’ve recently launched a RIN Twitter account which will act as a hub for exchanging ideas, sharing news and celebrating work. To help spread the news of our joining, please follow the account here, retweet posts and tag the RIN in items you think might be of interest to members. 

Over the coming weeks and months I’ll also be updating this website with information about upcoming events, partnerships and relevant publications, as well as sharing useful links to research, cultural and pedagogical platforms. Please get in touch if you would like to be added as a Member, have any suggestions for material to be included or if you would like to recommend a book or article to be added to the Bibliography page (don’t be shy about sharing your own!). 

Finally, I’d like to take this opportunity to invite ongoing contributions to the RIN blog. We welcome anything which might interest our diverse network of members: posts might, for example, take the form of a review of an event, text or media item; an exploration of a primary source; or serve as an introduction to a new research project. All topics related to visual culture in the Romantic period will be considered. The RIN endorses a broad definition of illustration, welcoming interdisciplinary approaches and international perspectives which bring together scholars working on poetry, prose, the printed book, paintings and other visual materials from roughly 1750-1850. Published posts will be shared on Twitter, as well as directly with our network members and partners. As an illustration network we are particularly keen to reinstate our popular Image of the Month series, which spotlights paintings, prints and other illustrations. Posts typically range from 500-3000 words. Previous Image of the Month publications can be viewed here: https://romanticillustrationnetwork.com/category/image-of-the-month/.

As the year unfolds, I hope you will consider submitting your suggestions and ideas to the RIN, and contribute to the exciting ongoing conversations in the field of Romantic visual culture. I’ll leave you with this satirical print of a young French man, whose festive extravagances catch up with him as creditors, rather than friends, come a-calling on the morning of New Year’s Day 1815…

Please get in touch with me at ks596@exeter.ac.uk

Les Visites du Jour de l’An (The New Year’s Day Visits). 1814. British Museum, Museum no. 2001,0520.72.

Roehampton Research Seminar, 9 December 2020 1-2pm

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‘From Fetters to Letters: Illustration and Black Empowerment in the Romantic period’

Fuseli, Henry; Johnson, Joseph; Raimbach, Abraham; Poems by William Cowper, London 1808, vol.I, facing p.375; The Negro Revenged; https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/O14489 Credit line: (c) Royal Academy of Arts

English and Creative Writing Research Seminars: Autumn 2020

Wednesday 9 December 1-2pm

Ian Haywood and David Fallon

‘From Fetters to Letters: Illustration and black empowerment in the Romantic period’

https://roehampton-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/87224230938?pwd=d1IxakpMNHhoOHNYVVhkRUloWlJXQT09

Passcode: 664084

CfP: Association of Art Historians 2017

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AAH2017 

43rd Annual Conference and Art Book Fair

Loughborough University

6 – 8 April 2017

Deadline for Proposals: 7 November 2016

 

AAH2017’s Call for Papers includes two sessions of interest to RIN’s members, readers and followers:

 

Prints in Books: the materiality, art history and collection of illustrations

Convenor: Elizabeth Savage, Cambridge University, leu21@cam.ac.uk

 

Speculative Libraries

Convenor: Nick Thurston, University of Leeds, n.thurston@leeds.ac.uk

 

Please email your paper proposals straight  to the session convenor(s). Provide a title and abstract for a 25 minute paper (max 250 words). Include your name, affiliation and email. Your paper title should be concise and accurately reflect what the paper is about (it should ‘say what it does on the tin’) because the title is what appears most first and foremost online, in social media and in the printed programme.

You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.

 

RIN Summer event: ‘Staging Shakespeare’, Professor Frederick Burwick, Westminster Archives Centre, July 19th 2016

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RIN’s summer event took place on one of the hottest evenings of the year, but a great crowd turned out to hear Frederick Burwick’s public lecture ‘Staging Shakespeare: picturing Shakespeare’s plays in the 18th and 21st centuries’.

A renowned expert on the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, Burwick’s starting point was the question: what relevance are the Boydell prints to the staging of Shakespeare?

His answer, in contrast to Richard Altick’s (in Painting From Books, 1985) is: quite a lot.

Burwick picked out 27 images which showed that many (not all) of the Boydell prints in fact have a close affinity with what a London audience might have witnessed on stage at the end of the 1700s.

He showed that, because many of the original paintings were done by artists who were also scene painters, the prints are a useful guide to what the 18th century stage would have looked like. Northcott and others asked actors such as Kemble to pose in their studios in role, and the paintings conform to the language of gesture in use on the stage at that time.

Indeed, Burwick’s lecture made it clear that the Boydell images remained an influence on subsequent Shakespeare productions, as Burwick drew comparisons with 20th and 21st century stagings.

At the wine reception (sponsored by the British Association for Romantic Studies) after the lecture, attendees were able to look at the digitized Shakespeare Gallery prints donated to RIN by Burwick, and also at items from the Westminster Archives extensive Theatre collection.

 

 

Reminder: RIN’s summer event, ‘Staging Shakespeare’, London July 19th

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‘Staging Shakespeare: picturing Shakespeare’s plays in the 18th and 21st centuries’.
Professor Fred Burwick, University of California Los Angeles

Tuesday 19th July 2016
6.30pm – 8pm
City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s St, London, SW1P 2DE

Join us for an event to celebrate Shakespeare’s 400th Anniversary, with a free public lecture followed by a wine reception (sponsored by the British Association for Romantic Studies).

Download the poster at https://romanticillustrationnetwork.wordpress.com/2016/05/03/rin-event-fred-burwick-staging-shakespeare-public-lecture-at-westminster-archives-july-19th-2016/.

 

RIN member Fred Burwick will share his expert knowledge of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, opened in Pall Mall in 1789. The talk will examine the extent to which any of the scenes in the Boydell Gallery might be presumed to represent how Shakespeare was actually performed during the period, and also consider present-day models of representation.

Prints from the Gallery will be on view, as well as a display about Shakespeare.

To book, contact: City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s St,London, SW1P 2DE
Tel: 020 7641 5180
Email: archives@westminster.gov.uk

 

In conversation with… Ian Hislop

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Ian Hislop, satirist, broadcaster, historian, and editor of Private Eye, chats to Roehampton’s Dr Mary L. Shannon about his new radio play ‘Trial by Laughter’ (co-written with Nick Newman) which dramatizes the trial of William Hone for libel in 1817, press freedom, and the importance of satirical images in the nineteenth century.

Click here to access the podcast and to get the full story.

Mary L. Shannon and Ian Hislop Private Eye

RIN members: request for help

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Dear All,

Thank you so much for continuing to be part of the Romantic Illustration Network, and for following the RIN blog.

We are interested in how membership of RIN has impacted upon the work and interests of all our members who are not university academics: artists, illustrators, independent scholars and everyone with a general interest in visual culture and/or illustration etc.

Has a post on this site generated any new ideas for you? Have you visited an exhibition advertised on the blog? Have you been inspired by something you heard about via RIN? We’d love to hear from you!

Drop me a sentence or two at Mary.Shannon@roehampton.ac.uk, and I will make sure future posts contain more of the info that you find useful and exciting.

 

A Christmas Workshop: RIN/House of Illustration Partnership

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Anna Glendenning is a PhD candidate from Roehampton’s Centre for Research in Romanticism, who works on caricature. She reports here on the Romantic Illustration Network’s collaboration with the House of Illustration on a workshop for Y8 pupils, supported by the University of Roehampton.

On Thursday 3rd December, the House of Illustration in King’s Cross London was home to an exciting day of collaboration between local schoolchildren, RIN member Dr. Mary L. Shannon from the University of Roehampton, and professional illustrator Merlin Evans.

A group of thirty girls aged 12-13 (from Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in Islington) braved a suitably chilly winter’s morning to visit the House of Illustration, where they immersed themselves in a special workshop on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol .  I also got to help out: it was hugely enjoyable to be part of such an inspiring day of interdisciplinary fun. For the full photostory, see http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/Courses/English-and-Creative-Writing/News/There-s-no-Bah-Humbug-this-Christmas-for-pupils-at-illustration-workshop/.

Marley’s Ghost — John Leech 1843 Hand-coloured steeling engraving 9 .8 x 8 cm vignetted Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, first edition (1843). Leech’s illustration captures the precise moment when the miser, in nightgown and sitting down before his fitful fire to enjoy a bowl of gruel, encounters the ghost of his dead partner. Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/carol/2.html Image courtesy of Toronto bibliophile and Dickens collector Dan Callinescu. Full-page illustration for Dickens’s Christmas Carol: ‘Marley’s Ghost’
“The Second of The Three Spirits” or “Scrooge’s third Visitor” John Leech 1843 Steel engraving, hand-coloured 12.2 cm x 8.3 cm vignetted Fifth illustration in A Christmas Carol (London: Chapman and Hall, 1843), facing p. 78. The fifth illustration is John Leech’s introduction to literature of that “pre-Father Christmas” figure, the Spirit of Christmas Present, not quite sitting on a “couch” or “kind of throne” (77), but decidedly “a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who [bears] a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn” (77). http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/carol/5.html Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

Dickens’ text has long been a favourite in English classrooms, but it was the aim of this collaboration to give the girls a unique opportunity to explore the crucial role of illustrations – both conceptually and creatively – with two experts.

The HOI’s learning programme, with Head of Education Emily Jost at its helm, is dedicated to bringing illustrations into the limelight. Its core aim is to enhance knowledge of and confidence in visual communication for all. The Romantic Illustration Network (RIN) shares this enthusiasm. RIN’s project to restore the importance of visual culture in the Romantic period involves a commitment to sharing and to promoting access to the research it undertakes.

Mary Shannon, who specializes in Victorian print culture and is a Dickens expert, led a lively session. By contrasting different illustrations of Scrooge with Dickens’s narrative, trying out their own sketches, and learning from Shannon about Victorian Christmas traditions, the girls contributed lots of compelling thoughts and critiques, expanding their understanding of the relationship between illustrations and Dickens’s text.

After taking a look at the House of Illustration’s current exhibition, the girls returned to the studio for a special session with Merlin Evans. Evans brought in tools from her trade and shared some different techniques of collage-making and line work to help the girls to get to grips with the material qualities of producing images. The girls rummaged through photocopies of Victorian illustrations and had the chance to try out the new drawing methods Evans had demonstrated. The results were exquisite. The girls were able to compare their work with the earlier sketches they had made – a great way to show how their understanding of Scrooge’s character had developed over the course of the workshop, and, hopefully, to boost their illustration skills and confidence into the future.

Future collaborative workshops involving RIN’s Professor Ian Haywood (Roehampton) and Dr Susan Matthews (Roehampton) are in the pipeline, so watch this space in the New Year!

Anna Glendenning

Autumn issue of ‘Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly’ now online

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“And I only am escaped alone to tell thee”: the autumn issue of Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly is now online.

http://blake.lib.rochester.edu/blakeojs/index.php/blake

Blake Illustrated Quarterly

It is dedicated to two articles on Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job. Mei-Ying Sung describes in detail for the first time the set of pre-publication Job proofs at the Beinecke Library at Yale, and Sibylle Erle talks about Alfred Tennyson’s copy of Job: how and when he acquired it and how he used it.

For past issues, see http://bq.blakearchive.org/