The collaboration of word and image is no new affair. The two have coexisted to create meaning ever since their very inception. They have mingled on the curves of ancient Greek vases and courted each other on papyri in Egypt even before the arrival of the illuminated manuscript. The illuminated manuscript is widely regarded as the predecessor of modern book illustration. Often created with gold and/ or silver embellishments and concerned with the topic of religion and spirituality, the illuminated manuscript was not created for mass production.  And this perhaps is one major difference between book illustration and its predecessor around which our perception of this art and demands of the market have evolved. With the evolution of the printing press, book illustration became easily accessible. Perhaps it is because of this lack of exclusiveness that illustrations have fallen from the pedestal of high art. .It was a shame in the Victorian society for the landed gentry to work. It was a shame in colonial India for the zamindars to work. It is similarly entirely shameful that art should have any other purpose along with or apart from providing pleasure and intellectual stimulation.

Walter Crane aptly notes in his book, The Claims of Decorative Art,

“The vigorous mental vitality as manifested in art is always characteristic of the great periods nor is it spent in one direction only, but, like the life-blood circulates freely through the whole body of art; so that the chased pattern upon a piece of armour or watch-plate, the design of a dress fabric or the woodcut ornaments of a printed book, no less than the frescoed or tapestried wall and the highly-wrought easel picture, declare the same nervous energy and endless untiring inventiveness in beautiful fertile design."

Yet, one might ask, if illustrations were popular then what came in the way of their preservation? Illustrations especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had short lives. They seldom outlived the edition. And with new editions came new illustrations or none(it was the text which was required to be retained, images were optional). People only remembered a handful of illustrators who either closely collaborated with the author or managed to remain a publisher's favourite. One good example would be Hablot Knight Browne( aka Phiz) who collaborated with Charles Dickens.

The question of edition makes the concept of illustration problematic.John Tenniel's illustrations for the Alice in Wonderland books became incredibly famous and today we no longer remember the dozen other illustrators for Alice. Even Carroll's own illustrations are less famous than those of Tenniel.

The aim of my blog is to bring to light the  lesser known illustrations for various texts and create a space for further discussion. I have prepared a list mostly from my own collection of illustrated books and I hope to expand this in future.

1.Jessie Wilcox Smith
Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

2. E.H. Shepard

 A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh

3.Greg and Tim Hildebrandt 

Oscar Wilde's "The Remarkable Rocket"

4. Jiri Behounek

 Hans Christian Andersen's "The Nightingale"

5. Nilabho D.C., Folk Tales from Bengal

6. Abanindranath Tagore, Arabian Nights

7. John Falter

Louisa M. Alcott's "Onawandah"

8.Oleg  Korovin

 Alexander Pushkin's "On Seashore Far A Green Oak Towers"

9.Warwick Goble 

Lal Behari Dey's Folk Tales of Bengal

10. Vilhelm Pedersen 

Hans Christian Andersen's "The Sweethearts; or the Top and the Ball"

In this connection I would also like to include an illustration(by yours truly), created for a Bengali translation of "The Sweethearts; or the Top and the ball" that has been recently published.