Illustrated fiction is a hybrid narrative medium in which images and text work together to tell a story. It can take various forms, including fiction written for adults or children, magazine fiction, comic strips, and picture books.

Illustrated fiction in the 1700s

During the 18th century, fiction was usually published in three volumes. Apart from an occasional portrait or map, fiction was not usually illustrated, as publishers did not commission illustrations for new novels. In the novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. First published on 28 February 1749, Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel...

, the author Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....

 refers to paintings by William Hogarth

William Hogarth

William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...

 in order to explain what some of his characters look like.

Illustrations were commissioned for already successful books. These illustrated versions were usually published as limited editions and sold through prior subscription. Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

 created a single frontispiece for the fourth edition of Tobias Smollett

Tobias Smollett

Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...

's The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. Thomas Stothard

Thomas Stothard

Thomas Stothard was an English painter, illustrator and engraver.-Life and work:Stothard was born in London, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper in Long Acre, London. A delicate child, he was sent at the age of five to a relative in Yorkshire, and attended school at Acomb, and afterwards at...

 provided several illustrations for an edition of The Vicar of Wakefield

The Vicar of Wakefield

The Vicar of Wakefield is a novel by Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. It was written in 1761 and 1762, and published in 1766, and was one of the most popular and widely read 18th-century novels among Victorians...

published 30 years after its first publication in 1766.

Near the end of the 18th century, new mechanical techniques allowed pictures to be printed cheaply. Illustrated classics became cheaply available, and were strongly remembered by their readers. John Ruskin

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...

 was moved by illustrations of Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...

 crashing into rocks and escaping his wreck. Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

 remembered the illustrations in many books more than the prose itself.

Illustrated fiction in the 1800s

At the beginning of the 19th century, illustration increased the sales of previously published fiction. In 1836, the publication of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...

in an illustrated serialized format revolutionised the publication of new fiction. The popularity of the original illustrations in Dickens's novels was unprecedented, and helped to popularize the use of illustrations in serious fiction. This revolution lasted until 1870, as other authors and published attempted to emulate Dickens's success. Illustrations became common in the period. For publishers, new fiction with illustrations published serially was less of a commercial risk than the traditional unillustrated three-volume sets. Illustrations attracted readers and increased advertising revenue. Illustrations were used as advertisement's in booksellers windows.

During the 19th century, the use of photomechanical techniques decreased the cost of reproducing illustrations. Both colour and black and white illustrations were increasingly used in daily, weekly, and monthly publications. Publishers sold a great deal of one-volume hardcovers and periodical serials.

Dickens's novels were well-suited to graphic representation. Dickens believed that the drawings that illustrated his fiction were valuable, despite some critics urging him not to use them. Most of his major works were originally published with illustrations. He was intensely involved in the creation of most of the 900 original illustrations of his writing. These illustrations were produced by 18 artists, including George Cruikshank

George Cruikshank

George Cruikshank was a British caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth" during his life. His book illustrations for his friend Charles Dickens, and many other authors, reached an international audience.-Early life:Cruikshank was born in London...

 and Robert Seymour

Robert Seymour (illustrator)

Robert Seymour was a British illustrator. Seymour is known for his illustrations of the works of Charles Dickens and for his caricatures.-Early years:...

.

Most of William Ainsworth

William Harrison Ainsworth

William Harrison Ainsworth was an English historical novelist born in Manchester. He trained as a lawyer, but the legal profession held no attraction for him. While completing his legal studies in London he met the publisher John Ebers, at that time manager of the King's Theatre, Haymarket...

's, Charles Lever

Charles Lever

Charles James Lever was an Irish novelist.-Biography:Lever was born in Dublin, the second son of James Lever, an architect and builder, and was educated in private schools. His escapades at Trinity College, Dublin , where he took the degree in medicine in 1831, are drawn on for the plots of some...

's, William Thackeray's, and Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...

's major works were initially published in illustrated monthly parts. Later, novelists preferred to publish their writing in illustrated magazines. Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

 often did this. George Meredith

George Meredith

George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...

 did this twice, and George Eliot

George Eliot

Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...

 once. 19th century author artists included William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...

 and George du Maurier

George du Maurier

George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a French-born British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and also for his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier...

.

Many artists began their careers illustrating fiction. Illustrating was a difficult and badly-paid job. Hablot Knight Browne

Hablot Knight Browne

Hablot Knight Browne was an English artist, famous as Phiz, illustrator of books by Charles Dickens, Charles Lever and Harrison Ainsworth.-Biography:...

 was one of the few very talented artists to pursue illustrating full-time. Most artists, such as Marcus Stone

Marcus Stone

Marcus Stone , English painter, son of Frank Stone, ARA, was trained by his father and began to exhibit at the Royal Academy before he was eighteen; and a few years later he illustrated with much success books by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and other writers, friends of his family.He was...

 and Luke Fildes

Luke Fildes

Sir Samuel Luke Fildes RA was an English painter and illustrator born at Liverpool and trained in the South Kensington and Royal Academy schools....

, used illustrating as a stepping-stone to a career in painting. Other artists like George Cattermole

George Cattermole

George Cattermole was an English painter and illustrator, chiefly in watercolours. He was a friend of Charles Dickens and many other literary and artistic figures.-Life and work:...

 and Daniel Maclise

Daniel Maclise

Daniel Maclise was an Irish history, literary and portrait painter, and illustrator, who worked for most of his life in London, England.-Early life:...

 supplemented their income by providing illustrations.

The popularity of illustrated fiction began to decline in the late 19th century, as illustrations lost their novelty and no longer guaranteed that a novel would sell well. Technological improvements in printing flooded the market with affordable novels with illustrations of high quality. Prestigious artists including John Everett Millais

John Everett Millais

Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...

, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...

, Edward Burne-Jones

Edward Burne-Jones

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...

, and Frederick Leighton started to illustrate books. Illustrations challenged the novel's prose, implying a failure in prose's self-sufficiency. Prose frequently took second place to illustration.

Illustrated fiction in the 1900s

The amount of illustrated fiction that was published declined from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1930s. By the 1930s, illustrations were rarely used in adult's novels. Illustrated serious fiction was not popular over the rest of the century. The decline in the publication of serials, rise in labour costs, and competition from film, television, and photojournalism contributed to its decline. There was also less demand from readers. Historians of Western illustrated fiction mostly agree that film replaced the illustrated book. A review of the 1915 film adaptation of Vanity Fair said that "the reels make a set of illustrations superior to the conventional pen-pictures of a deluxe edition."

Modern literary fiction was often not well-suited to illustration, for example the introspective novels of E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...

 and Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

. Illustrations were used on book covers to attract buyers, but not used within the novel. Similar to the period before 1836, illustrations were not commissioned for new books, but were commissioned for established classics, usually for a limited luxury edition. Serious novels are not illustrated, and illustrated fiction is generally associated with serialized or short fiction that is published in popular but not intellectually prestigious magazines. Children and comics readers became the only fiction readers whose fiction was generally illustrated.

Some authors were concerned that illustrations would date or misinterpret their prose. Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

 disliked illustrations, claiming that illustrations were not needed because prose was sufficiently pictorial. He thought that illustrations and prose were in competition with one another. He permitted his travel books, but not his mature fiction, to be illustrated. Alvin Colburn's photographs were used in the New York edition of his works only as frontispiece

Book frontispiece

A frontispiece is a decorative illustration facing a book's title page. The frontispiece is the verso opposite the recto title page. Elaborate engraved frontispieces were in frequent use, especially in Bibles and in scholarly books, and many are masterpieces of engraving...

s, and only after James reassured himself that they did not compete or make a reference to his prose. Similar to James, Thomas Hardy increasingly excluded illustrations from the collected editions of his novels, with the exception of maps that he had drawn and photographic frontispieces.

None of the first or standard editions of James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

's novels were illustrated during his lifetime, except for an edition of Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

published by the Limited Editions Club in 1935, which included drawings and etchings by Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

. Pearl Buck's husband Richard Walsh

Richard Walsh

Richard Walsh was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Teachta Dála for the Mayo South constituency at the September 1927 general election...

, as editor of Asia

Asia (magazine)

Asia was a popular American magazine in the 1920s and 1930s that featured reporting about Asia and its people, including both the Far East and the Middle East. The magazine was published in New York City, and was founded by Gertrude Emerson Sen, who served as the first editor. The magazine was...

, included illustrations with Buck's work that was published there in serial or complete form. However, as editor and later president of the John Day Company

John Day Company

The John Day Company was a New York publishing firm that specialized in illustrated fiction and current affairs books and pamphlets from 1926-1968. It published books by, among others, Pearl Buck, Irving Adler, Peggy Adler and Sidney Hook. It was founded by Richard Walsh in 1926 and named after...

, he did not include illustrations in the subsequent hardcover editions of these novels. When Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

's novella The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who...

was first published in Life

Life (magazine)

Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

magazine in 1952, it was illustrated with blue-tinted drawings by Noel Sickles

Noel Sickles

Noel Douglas Sickles was an American commercial illustrator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Scorchy Smith....

. These illustrations were not included in its first publication in volume form, published by Charles Scribner's Sons

Charles Scribner's Sons

Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...

.

In the middle of the 20th century, the comic strip using visual images to convey action were a great influence on children and young people. Comic books had a unique storytelling potential.

External links

• Illustrations of Tristram Shandy — Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department.
• Gaudy Pictures For New Novels, 1909 New York Times article.
• Kelmscott Chaucer.