But surely dominating the mid-1860s and early 1870s we must consider the two Alice
books by Lewis Carroll. Here we have perhaps for the first time an artist and a writer
working together to produce a definitive form of an illustrated story. Others have since
tried to interpret Carroll’s Wonderland creatures, but surely no one has portrayed them
so memorably as their first illustrator, Sir John Tenniel. Subsequent artists have also
given permanent form to a writer’s imagination (Shepard’s illustrations for A.A.Milne’s
Winnie-the-Pooh books spring to mind), but here in a book for children was the first
complete interpretation of a fantasy world, which has survived more than a century of
change in children’s books.
Would the Alice books have survived to the same degree if they had been unillustrated?
It is an interesting speculation, since it can also be applied to other books where text
and pictures complement each other so perfectly—in Beatrix Potter’s work for example.
Certainly Lewis Carroll depicted his creatures verbally with great care, but readers
would have been left to imagine the exact form of the Wonderland creatures without
Tenniel’s guide. This is perhaps the great mark of a good book illustrator, in that the
visual forms they give to the text linger in the mind, whereas those of lesser illustrators
(and there have been many of Alice alone) do not.
Some of the finest children’s books date from the 1860s, a notable period for British
book illustration, when known illustrators worked with book designers to produce works
for children which were as fine inside as out, and as good reading as viewing. But Sir
John Millais, Arthur Hughes, Ernest Griset and others were all producing high quality
black-and-white work during this period, just at the moment when colour printing and
photography were about to be applied to children’s books in such a way that, for a time
at least, progress would seem to go backwards rather than forwards. For it is very rare
that any new process immediately reaches its peak—there has to be a period of trial and
development.
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, technical developments were increasing
in all fields of book production and helped to satisfy the immense growth in children’s
reading. This increase in readership was brought about by the various Education Acts,
starting with that of 1870. With the expansion of literacy went also the further
development of the illustrated journal, widening in scope and reaching lower down the
social scale—with the consequent need for ever cheaper productions.
At the end of the century there was a conscious effort to reduce costs, which led to the
employment once again of hack artists—often unnamed as in the past— together with
poor quality paper and type, as we can see from those journals and cheap books which
have survived. In colour printing, especially the three-colour process, there was both
good and bad, and on the whole, the good was much more expensive. Fortunately the
‘toy book’, in the hands of publishers such as Darton, Routledge and Warne, ensured
that the standard was largely maintained, aided by the arrival on the scene in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century of a great triumvirate of illustrators, Walter Crane,
Randolph Caldecott and Kate Green-away, together with the remarkably competent
colour printer, Edmund Evans.
Of the three artists mentioned, Randolph Caldecott was probably most truly a book
illustrator. Walter Crane was certainly more prolific, but his other work in the decorative
arts tended to spill over into his books, making him more of a book decorator than an
TYPES AND GENRES 223