Victorian Illustrated Books Gallery Exhibit

In 1907, Oscar Wilde’s (1854-1900) play “Salomé” was written – “translated from the French of Oscar Wilde with sixteen illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)”.  This image, titled “Woman in the Moon” is the very first full-page image created with line block print on Japanese vellum that is found in Oscar Wilde’s play. Aubrey Beardsley is also known to have illustrated the first four volumes of the Yellow Book (1894-1897). This black and white block print image depicts a naked man and a woman in a gown that hits the ground look towards the moon to the left of the image…

Aubrey Beardsley's Illustrations were published within the first English edition of Salome by John Lane in 1894. These images were known to be greatly controversial during the Victorian era as they depicted scenes that were deemed as erotic, violent and inappropriate, but this was Beardsley's goal as he strived to defy the norms of the era. In 1893, a year before the publication of the English version of Salome, Beardsley was asked by a British newspaper to submit a single image to represent the story and was rejected immediately when he submitted "The Climax". The image above is one of…

“The Ghosts of Departed Usurers, or, The Phantoms” is an illustration by John Leech, found in Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas Carol. It is a vignetted, black and white, woodcut engraving found in the novella’s first stave. The image depicts various spirits in the background, who have revealed themselves to Scrooge as an indication of what he will become. This is in contrast to the foreground, which shows a homeless woman without shelter sitting down. John Leech’s traditionally cartoonist style allows for an expressive depiction of the scene, coupled with the harsh, dark…

This illustration from Pamela Colman Smith's Annancy Stories (1899) is representative of the modern style she uses throughout the book and her work at large. It contains traces of the aesthetic principles of her instructor at the Pratt Institute, Arthur Wesley Dow, in particular and of the contemporary art movements he was associated with, Art Nouveau and aestheticism, in general. An early modernist, Dow held that it was not the artist's job to imitate nature realistically, but rather to produce beauty through the formal elements of the medium at hand. Namely, Dow stressed…

William Holman Hunt was one of the prolific founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artist group. His artwork is well-known for its careful attention to detail and brightly-coloured palettes, interwoven with Christian symbolism. His art piece, The Lady of Shalott, which was published in 1857 is no exception, featuring this characteristic religious subject matter. The 1857 illustration was first sketched out by Hunt and then etched into a wood-cut engraving by John Thompson, one of the most renowned wood-engravers of the time period. The engraving was then pressed onto…

This is the cover image of the reprinted version of Goblin Market illustrated by Margaret Tarrant, published in 1912. This image shows the goblin-like creatures pawing at a young woman and pushing their fruit towards her. This image differs from other illustrations accompanying this text where the illustrators portray more sexually explicit images. While this version of the poem does take away the sexual imagery used in other texts, it still kept the sexual subtext in the text. What I mean by this is all the visual sexual content has been erased, probably to better appeal to a child…

This image is specifically chosen for the image gallery because it is illustrated by Laurence Housman, but as we know, Christina Georgina Rossetti actually deliberately asked Laurence Housman to use pen and ink to keep the goblins looking as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, her brother, had illustrated them originally.  So, with that being said, Laurence Housman dedicated a lot of time to perfecting the exact copies of the Goblins in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti had created. We are looking at Laurence Housman’s image here, but if you visit Lorraine Janzen's curation of …

Goblin Market is known for its highly implicit sexual implications that are usually considered taboo for children. Sexuality is included both verbally and visually throughout the text, specifically in this image by Dion Clayton Calthrop. He is known for his incorporation of fairies in his illustrations, which can be reflected here in this image with the embroidery that is on the woman’s dress. This image still incorporates an underlying sexual theme, as the relationship between these two sisters seems almost intimate. There is a sexual innuendo that is present in this illustration,…

This is an 8 cm by 6.5 cm wood-block engraving black and white vignette illustration by John Leech and it appears at the end of Stave Five in A Christmas Carol. It shows Scrooge and Bob Cratchit sitting in Scrooge’s office which appears to be decorated for Christmas and together they share smoking bishop. It is a type of mulled wine or punch and was popular in Victorian times around Christmas time. Both men, especially Scrooge, look happy about their encounter given the distance between the two men and how the share the table together so closely. Bob has been told that he will be…

"The Race" is the fourth illustration in the 1896 version of The Were-Wolf, written by Clemence Housman and published by The Bodley Head. It is a wood engraving from a pen and ink drawing of Laurence Housman. "The Race" depicts the pursuit of White Fell through the woods by Christian as midnight approaches. Christian believes her to be a were-wolf and wants to kill her in her wolf form before she kills her next planned victim, Sweyn. 

The illustration uses light and shadow to juxtapose the feminine and the masculine. White has commonly been associated with the…

William Holeman Hunt’s first interpretive illustration of the “Lady of Salott” was featured in the 1857, Edward Moxon publication of Alfred Tennyson’s Poems. Tennyson disagreed with many of the initial interpretations of his poem, including Hunt’s imagery and use of the web. Despite Tennyson’s disappointment, Hunt went on to illustrate two more versions of the “Lady of Shalott”. His final depiction of the lady in 1886 was his largest work, featuring oil paint and canvas. The painting took Hunt a total of twenty years to complete. Over time, his eyesight began to deplete and the painting…

“The Eyes of Herod” is one of 16 full plate illustrations in the 1894 English edition of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley’s illustrations were photomechanically printed onto Japanese vellum via half-tone printing that was popular at the end of the century. The illustration features Beardsley’s emblematic signature, located on the left of the image between underneath the leaves of the trees. “The Eyes of Herod” is notable as it condenses several characteristics of the Salome illustrations as a whole as well as exemplifies Beardsley’s Decadent art…

The Were Wolf, published in 1896 by John Lane at The Bodley Head, is the artistic collaborative project of siblings’ Clemence Housman (1861-1955), and Laurence Housman (1865-1959). Clemence Housman’s The Were Wolf originated as an oral tale to entertain the women in her wood-engraving class at The City and Guilds South London Technical Art School (Natt). It was first published in 1890 as a feature story in the monthly girl’s periodical Atalanta accompanied by Everard Hopkins’ illustrations (Kooistra). The Bodley Head publication, which is the first stand-alone publication…

This image represents the feminist tones throughout Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market . Christina Rossetti takes a religious approach to her story telling technique which is very popular in Victorian literature. Instead of telling the traditional story of temptation and a woman tempting a man, it is rather the masculine figures of the Goblins tempting the women. This role reversal gives power to the women and shows men as something other than the hero or the protagonist of life. This is shown in the wood engravings done by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in which the goblins, who are…

"The Toilette of Salome" was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley for the 1894 English translation of Oscar Wilde's French play, Salome: A Tragedy in One Act. The image is a full-page, bordered plate, printed on Japanese vellum via half-tone printing, and features Beardsleys signature black and white curvilinear style. In addition, Beardsley's emblematic signature is located in the bottom right of the image. The illustration depicts Salome in her bathroom, being groomed by a masked Harlequin-Pierrot figure. Despite the text of Wilde's play taking place during…

Sidney Paget’s “He is a professional beggar” is the fifth of ten illustrations found in Doyle’s short story “The Man with the Twisted Lip;” the illustration is located on page 139 of The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes (1892).  “The Man with the Twisted Lip” was the eight Sherlock Holmes story, first published in the Strand Magazine in December of 1891.  The story begins with Dr. Watson coming to the aid of his wife’s friend; the woman is distraught, claiming her husband, an opium addict, is missing.  After helping the couple, Watson finds Detective Holmes…

Oscar Wilde’s Salomé was originally published in French in 1893 with the intention to shock audiences with perverse imagery. The production of the play however, came to a halt because of censorship issues and instead went on to be published in an English translation a year later, including Aubrey Beardsley’s artwork. Like his other illustrations throughout the play, “The Eyes of Herod” was fashioned in black and white, art-nouveau style, using photomechanical line blocks. His drawings were considered to be both transparent and ambiguous in the sense of sexual references. Many of his…

First published in 1894, with the English translation of the play, ‘The Peacock Skirt’ is one of sixteen black and white ink framed inset illustrations drawn by Aubrey Beardsley for Oscar Wilde’s play, Salome: A Tragedy in One Act. The illustration depicts the princess Salome, regaled in an elaborate skirt and headdress that are reminiscent of a peacock, conversing with the character known as ‘the young Syrian’. Aubrey Beardsley’s artistic style is a nod to the aesthetic style that emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century known as art nouveau, as well as the movement of…

Aubrey Beardsley initially began his illustrations of Salome with a single illustration commissioned by a British magazine in reaction to the notorious play written by Oscar Wilde. When the illustration was published (by a different magazine since the original one found it to be too salacious) it found its way to Wilde who then commissioned Beardsley to illustrate the English edition of the play.

Located on page 21, the illustration “John and Salome” by Aubrey Beardsley depicts the meeting of the prophet Jokanaan and the tetrarch’s daughter Salomé. Each has a limited…

This black-and-white wood-block print by Aubrey Beardsley depicts the Page of Herodias mourning the death of the Syrian Captain. "Platonic," in its title, refers to the Greek philosopher Plato. Stylistically, it is in accord with the other illustrations Beardsely produced for Salome, exhibiting the aesthetics of the Art Nouveau and Aestheticist movements of which he was a part. It is highly geometric, most obviously in the depiction of the tree in the midground. It makes use of negative space - the entire upper-left quadrant of the piece is left empty. Both the Page of…

“The Story of the Herons" is the fourth framed inset illustration found on page 50 in Laurence Housman's House of Joy. The illustration is wood engraved and proleptic in nature (predictive of the story's events). As Housman was inspired by the art from the Pre-Raphaelites, they were known to encompass the entirety of stories usually within a single illustration, saving room for artistic and interpretive liberties.

Keeping that in mind, the princess sits with her eyes closed in a billowing gown, insinuating the curse that had been placed on her…

The illustration for “The Luck of the Roses,” appears on page 24 of Laurence Housman’s House of Joy (1895). The illustrator, as well as the author was Laurence Housman. The wood engraved illustration is the first thing the reader is exposed to while interacting with the story. He was largely inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites, therefore proving to be very evident in his style of writing an illustrating. He worked to challenge the conventional way in which Victorians would often create art. The illustration depicts an idyllic garden scene that positions the wife and husband at…

Laurence Housman’s book of fairy-tales, House of Joy, was released in 1895. This illustration, titled “Syringa” and illustrated by Housman himself, accompanies the short story of the same name. It is a framed inset, black and white wood engraving, and is placed at the very beginning of the story on page 86. The illustration depicts the foster brother of the King sitting next to the titular Syringa, who is laying in the garden before her death sentence.

In illustrating “Syringa,” as well as the other images in House of Joy, two main inspirations guided the…

The illustration "The Moon-Flower" by Laurence Housman is placed on page 136 of The House of Joy (1895). Housman completed both the writing, designing and illustrating for this collection of Victorian stories. This wood engraved illustration demonstrates a woman who is watering her garden and is reached out to by another figure that is hidden within the bushes. When immediately looking at the illustration without reading the story, there is not much to understand about the image without context. The male figure is the Prince, and the woman is someone that he discovers has been…

This is an 8 cm by 6.5 cm wood-block engraving black and white vignette illustration by Laurence Housman and it appears twice in Housman’s The House of Joy book which is a collection of fairy tale stories. It is on the frontispiece next to the title page and it is on page 36. Housman wrote the book and drew all the illustrations that are included. It shows the minstrel sleeping in front of the statue of the White King. The waiting-woman goes to the garden, sees him sleeping and goes to kiss him while professing her love for him. Hiding behind some trees is the Queen who waits for…

The Were-Wolf, written by Clemence Housman, is a short story first published in Atalanta: A Magazine for Girls in 1890, with these illustrations by Everard Hopkins. The story origniated as an oral tale that Housman told to the other women in her wood-engraving class. It was later published on its own in 1896 with John Lane at the Bodley Head, for which Laurence Housman completed the pen-and-ink illustrations and Clemence herself completed the wood engraving. Rol’s Worship is a full-page illustration that can be found facing page 8 of the second published version…

In 1896, Clemence Housman’s wood-cut engraving illustration, “The Race” was published in her fantasy novel, The Were-Wolf, using a relief printing technique. The full-page engraving was based on her brother Laurence Housman’s original design, facing page 80 of the book. The Were-Wolf was first published as a short story in Atalanta: A Magazine for Girls in 1890, before later being published with John Lane at The Bodley Head nearly a decade later. This illustration features a pivotal moment of tension when the titular were-wolf character, White Fell, is…

“The Finish” is a wood cut graving done by Clemence Housmans of her brother Lawrence Housmans illustrations based on her short story ‘The Werewolf’. The story was officially published in 1896 by John Lane the Bodley Head but did appear in a where Laurence Housman worked but a copy of the story did appear in a volume of 'Atalanta' which was a womans magazine in 1890. The engraving depicts an important moment of the story in when Christian runs in front of White Fell and she tackles him with a feint punch with her right hand and leaps on top of him. The moment comes right before White Fell…

Pamela Colman Smith’s Annancy Stories (1899) features the first known published illustrations of Anansi, also known as Annancy, the witty and cunning traditional African folktale character who is represented as a spider in human form. Annancy’s roots in Jamaica are closely linked to the 16th-century Atlantic slave trade during which African slaves were transported to Jamaica under the British imperial rule.

Smith’s Annancy Stories is uniquely Jamaican: the narrative text written is in a Jamaican patois, the illustrations are bold, distinctly non-Victorian, non-…

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Pre-Raphaelite artist, designed "Buy from us with a golden curl" as the frontispiece to his sister Christina Rossetti's first commercially published book of poetry, Goblin Market and Other Poems (Macmillan 1862). The subject he chose for his composition was the scene of temptation in "Goblin Market," the book's title poem. Together with the title-page vignette, “Golden head by golden head,” the frontispiece shaped readers’ interpretations by proleptically anticipating events in the poem they had not yet read. At the same time, the hand-…

Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893) was one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists commissioned by the Dalziel Brothers to provide illustrations for Poets of the NIneteenth Century (1857), a lavishly illustrated Christmas gift book featuring national poets. As a Pre-Raphaelite artist, Brown followed a "truth to nature" approach to his illustrations, for which he used models. This "realist" approach to illustration was distinct from the caricature style of artists like George Cruikshank, John Leech, and John Tenniel, who did not use models for their drawings. For his  illustration for Lord…

Published by John Lane at the Bodley Head in 1894, the first English edition of Oscar Wilde's Salome: A Tragedy in One Act was embellished with ten controversial illustrations by the art-nouveau artist Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898). Beardsley was the first artist to draw specifically for the photomechanical reproduction. Beardsley followed the modern idea of "unfettered illustrations." Rather than serve the text, Beardsley made the text he decorated his own with his bold designs and distinctive critical attitudes. As a decadent artist, Beardsley refused to conform to…

This image is found in A Christmas Carol (1843), created with hand colouredsteel engraving/etching. This is a full page image that accompanies Stave 1 of the book. It is a 9.8x8 cm piece of art is depicting the moment in the story that Scrooge encounters his dead buisness partner. This image was created in a caricature-like way, with realistic elements. Jacob Marely and Ebenezer Scrooge together while Marely is shown with chains created out of ledger books, representing how greed weighs down a persons spirit even in the afterlife. This image, like others in teh…

This 9.5 x 6.3 cm wood engraved image, dropped into letterpress, in A Christmas Carol (1843), depicts the moment  in time in which reveals to Ebenezer Scrooge what he will become after death. Leech's illustration is repetitive here as it echos the written text, depicting a homeless woman in the foreground, and the phantoms of the image are in an agitated state because they cannot help the woman in their immaterial form. Alongside the other images in Stave 1, this image depicts the figuraitive line between life and the afterlife. This image is found on…

John Leech's steel engraved image is featured in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It is a frontispiece accompanying the second stave. It is a caricature-style image illustrating the annual Christmas ball hosted by Mr. Fezziwig in his workplace. In the image, Mr. Fezziwig can be seen dancing with his wife and workers. This image demonstrates the class disparity of the Victorian era, depicting Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig as "comfortable, oily, rich, fat, and jovial" in keeping with Dicken's description of Mr. Fezziwig's voice in the stave. It contrasts with the depiction of…

John Leech's wood engraving in the second stave of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol illustrates Ebenezer Scrouge using an extinguisher cap to smother the first ghost he encounters after revisiting a memory with his past lover Fanny. This is a caricature that accompanies the ending of Stave 2. The image represents a suppression of memories, likely alluding to Dickens' own memories of his sister, who was also named Fanny.

A Christmas Carol (1843). Written by Charles Dickens and illustrated by John Leech. Engraved by Linton. In this three quarter paged, black and white wood engraving vignette illustration on page 119, Scrooge encounters two impoverished children. At the sight of their haggard appearance in the cold, Scrooge faces internal guilt and remorse over his greedy capitalist ways and his hungry pursuit of money and exploitation. The industrial buildings and factories of 19th century London loom in the background, symbolizing the way greed, consumerism, and industrialization entrap the citizens of…

“Last of Spirits” is found in Stave 4 of A Christmas Carol (1843). It was created by John Leech and is a hand-coloured steel engraving. It is also 10.5 x 8.2 cm vignetted, and can be found on page 150. The image shows The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come pointing down at Scrooge’s grave, as Scrooge is kneeling with his face in his hands. The illustration ultimately depicts emotion as we are physically able to see a transformation in Scrooge. 

Contributors: Nicole Bernard, Mark Dasilva, Marina Arnone, Joseph Pereira, Alicia Puebla- Ponciano and Tatiana Batista 

This 8 cm by 6.5 cm woodcut vignette, drawn by John Leech, can be found in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843). The image depicts the close of the tale, when Scrooge, a changed man, offers Bob well wishes for the holidays and a raise. He says they will discuss these things over a bowl of smoking bishop. The image uses a caricature style, typical of John Leech, which allows for a very noticeably joyous expression from Scrooge. The room is decorated with evergreen boughs and holly to highlight Scrooges transformation through the image's setting. 

Located on page 78 of A Christmas Carol, John Leeche's image of Scrooge's Third Visitor depicts Scrooge and The Ghost of Christmas Present. It is a full-page coloured, steel-plate engraved/etched image that appears 12.2 cm x 8.3 cm vignetted on the page. Along with the image, Leeche's signature and the title "Scrooge's third Visitor" are engraved onto the plate. Leeche's image mimics the texts description of the Ghost of Christmas Present, wearing a green robe and surrounded by gifts representitive of prosperity, such as the torch he has that appears to reflect the…

This final 1857 illustration by Dante Rossetti depicts Sir Lancelot gazing down at the Lady of Shalott, who lies dead in a boat. Lancelot is hovering over the Lady of Shalott, emphasizing his freedom and power as a man in Victorian society. The Lady of Shalott, who in a sense, died for her freedom from her restricted life, represents middle class Victorian women at the time, whose lives were governed by strict gender expectations. Women were expected to be homemakers and to stay in the domestic sphere to protect their purity. Women were expected to literally stay inside the home unless…

Group 2: Alexandra Monstur, Emma Fraschetti, Andrea Aguiar, Mark Dasilva, Alicia Beggs-Holder

The framed, inset illustrated woodcut of The Lady of Shalott by William Holman Hunt showcases the Lady herself weaving in the tower that she is trapped in. The image appears as though the Lady is not only trapped in the tower, but being trapped by her weaving materials, which is a form of artistic liberty speaking to how she is trapped since this is not explicitly mentioned in the poem. The mirrors that she looks through are pictured behind her – one featuring what who we believe is…

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s illustration for Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” appears in the Moxon Tennyson on page 75. This illustration was produced through woodcut by the Daziel Brothers. 

Tennyson's sparse approach to description in the poem left much up to the interpretation of the artist when it came to creating and depicting its character and setting. The Lady of Shalott presented a unique opportunity for the Pre-Raphaelite illustrators to project the plight of the isolated artist onto the themes of the poem. This image communicates the tension inherent within an…

“The Lady of Shalott” is an inset illustration by William Holman Hunt, and engraved by the Dalziels in 1857. It is a 4.2 x 3.6 inches wood engraving that is found within The Moxon Tennyson. Hunt’s illustration depicts the titular Lady of Shallot at a moment where she begins to go mad in her isolation. This unfurling of her mental state is powerfully signified by her unruly hair, and the threads of her weaving tangling all over the picture. Notably, Hunt’s illustration is proleptically placed before the text of the poem, establishing a menacing tone that contrasts the opening stanza of the…

George Cruikshank (1792-1878) was the most celebrated comic artist of the early and mid Victorian periods. His caricature-style illustrations were popular in both magazines and serialized fiction. His illustrations for Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1837-1838), particularly the image of little Oliver asking for more food in the workhouse, and the picture of the cowering criminal, Fagin, awaiting his execution in Newgate Prison, are among the most memorable and haunting of Victorian illustrations. The featured image, "Fagin in the condemned cell," shows how Cruikshank's…

Sidney Paget’s illustration “Staring into the fire” is situated on the third page of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventures of the Man With the Twisted Lip,” a short story first published in Strand Magazine in the December 1891 issue and later republished as one of twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on October 14th, 1892. Located in the middle of the page with text surrounding it above, beside, and below, this vignette is the first of ten black and white watercolour images reproduced photographically within the short story. The illustration depicts Sherlock…

Sidney Paget, a British illustrator in the Victorian era, is most famously known for his illustrations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The image above is one of Paget’s 9 vignettes included in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” featured in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which was released on February 1892 in The Strand Magezine .This specific vignette depicts the moment in which the iconic Sherlock Holmes “[springs] from the bed, [strikes] a match, and lashe[s] furiously with his cane at the bell-pull” (Doyle 205). The phrase “HOLMES LASHED FURIOUSLY” is placed under the…

Sidney Paget illustrated this image entitled "he is a professional beggar" for Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Man with the Twisted Lip", a short story which was first published in the Strand Magazine in 1891. This is one of 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories, and is the sixth of twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. This image is located off to the side of the page with text surrounding it. It is the fifth if ten black and white watercolour images that have been photographically reproduced in this short story. The illustration depicts a man sitting on the ground against the wall,…

Sidney Paget’s black and white watercolour illustration, “At the foot of the stairs she met this Lascar scoundrel” is one of several of the artist’s drawings for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, “The Adventures of the Man With the Twisted Lip”. The story was first featured in an 1891 issue of The Strand Magazine, then later published alongside a series of other short stories entitled The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, in 1892. Paget (1860-1908) grew notorious from his illustrations for the Sherlock Holmes stories, visually canonizing the character based off Doyle’s basic…

"Ignorance and Want" is one of John Leech's 8 illustrations for Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The three quartered paged, black and white wood engraving vignette occurs in Stave three where Scrooge is confronted by his own greed with the help of the two children who accompany the second of the three spirits. The two children, called Ignorance and Want, symbolize the uncontrolled booming of the industrial and capitalistic society of the Victorian era. Furthermore, the factories illustrated in the background of the image allow …

Sidney Paget’s illustration “we had the carriage to ourselves” is a photographic reproduction of watercolour located on the second page of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Boscombe Valley Mystery.” The story with Paget’s illustration was first published in Strand Magazine in October 1891 before being rereleased as a part of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on October 14th, 1892. This is the first of nine images illustrated by Paget to be featured in the story and the fourth of 37 of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories to be illustrated by Paget, a partnership that was only ended by Paget’s death…

This illustration taken directly from Charles Dickens' famous novella “A Christmas Carol'' was done by illustrator John Leech in wood-engraved black and white style. Leeches' work although traditionally more cartoonish was utilized perfectly in this scene in which scrooge is confronted by the dark underbelly of industrilization and the horrors of child labour in England. For the first time Scrooge is faced with the social consequences of the unrelenting capitalism he defends so passionately in the opening stave of the story. This image paints a stark picture of the kind of class disparity…

This image, entitled, "Golden head by golden head," is a title-page vignette by Dante Gabriel Rosetti for his sister's work, Goblin Market and Other Poems, published in March of 1862 by Macmillan and Co. Dante Gabriel Rosetti was one of the artists most central to the Pre-Raphaelite movement. As such, the conventions of this particular artistic style are made evident through D.G. Rosetti's usage of heavy shadow and tone, and an attempt to realistically capture the likenesses of the poem's two heroines, sisters Laura and Lizzie. The image is proleptic in…

Sidney Paget’s illustration “Her face blanched with terror” was first published in 1892 for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes.  The illustration can be found in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” the eighth short story and tenth overall story in the Sherlock Holmes series.  Originally published in London, England in February 1892 by Strand Magazine, the story follows Helen Stoner, a young woman and soon-to-be bride, as she seeks the aid of Sherlock Holmes after suspecting her stepfather may attempt to kill her.  There a total of nine…

The image that I have selected is a Pre-Raphaelite illustration for the poem The Lady of Shallot by Alfred Tennyson, published in the Moxon Tennyson. The image is illustrated by artist William Holman Hunt and engraved by the Dalziels in 1857. It measures 4.2 x 3.6 inches on the page, and showcases the Lady featured in the poem, entangled in a web of her own weaving with multiple Pre-Raphaelite images showcased in the mirrors pictured behind her. The image is a wood-carved engraving previously drawn by a Pre-Raphaelite artist. This image speaks to the second wave of…

Kinuko Craft (January 3rd, 1940) had done the illustrations for Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market that had been featured in the "Ribald's Classics" section of Playboy magazine in 1973, Chicago, Illinois. Craft had done four illustrations by hand-painting them on canvas before being adjusted for the magazine pages themselves - the poem having been edited to fit the magazine. Her style was inspired from numerous artists, including those of the Pre-Raphaelites - the ways in which the women are tall with billowing hair and facial expressions most recognizable…

The title-page vignette of Goblin Market and Other Poems, by Christian Rossetti, is a wood engraving illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1862. The illustration was captioned, “Golden head by golden head.” The illustration shows Laura and Lizzie sleeping in an intimate embrace. Dante Gabriel Rossetti demonstrates conformity to the text as he illustrates the sisters almost identically. He is essentially using the poem as references, as Christina Rossetti describes the sisters as, “Like two blossoms on one stem.” He also included the first line of the stanza, “Golden head by golden head…

First published in 1857 for the special Moxon Tennyson edition, this woodblock engraving by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, depicts the Lady of Shalott, the titular character of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem of the same name, lying dead in the boat as Lancelot looks upon her from above. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded in September 1848. The Pre-Raphaelites were known for creating avante-garde illustration styles through melding the traditions of fine, highbrow art and decorative art.

They were also known for their unique depictions of…