On this page
- Departments (2)
-
Text (5)
-
pHf- ~ r - '' ¦ ¦¦"¦¦ - ¦¦ •,.- ¦¦ ^^^ ^...
-
CO2STT'E3SrTS
-
LITERAKY INTELLIGENCE 858 BOOKS AND RUMO...
-
St. Dunstan's House, E.C. July 15, 1890.
-
IOTRENUOUS as have been the efforts made...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Phf- ~ R - '' ¦ ¦¦"¦¦ - ¦¦ •,.- ¦¦ ^^^ ^...
pHf- ~ r - '' ¦ ¦¦"¦¦ - ¦¦ ,.- ¦¦ ^^^ ^^ " ^^ " *^^* ' * * SSii ^ 2 S- ^ Bi 1858 The Publisher * ' Circular July
Co2stt'e3srts
CO 2 STT'E 3 SrTS
Literaky Intelligence 858 Books And Rumo...
LITERAKY INTELLIGENCE 858 BOOKS AND RUMOURS OF BOOKS 859 NOTES AND NEWS 860
CONTINENTAL NOTES 862 BOOKSELLERS OF TO-DAY . —VI . MR . EDWARD JONES 863
THE MARRIAGE OF MR . STANLEY 864 THE LONDON BOOKSELLERS' SOCIETY 865 THE INCORPORATED SOCIETY OF AUTHORS .... 865
MR . JAMBS PAYN AND HIS AMERICAN PUBLISHERS 866 COPYRIGHT IN TITLES 866
GLIMPSES OF EMINENT PEOPLE 867 THE SOCIETY OP ARTS . 868 SHELLEY 868
SALE JOTTINGS 868
TRADE CHANGE IN MEMORIAM Qon 69
REVIEWS , < fcc ' 60 g INDEX TO BOOKS PUBLISHED IN GREAT
BRITAIN BETWEEN JULY 1 < fe 15 873 BOOKS PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN FROM JULY 1 TO 15 875
AMERICAN NEW BOOKS fi 7 o 0 / 0 RECENT FOREIGN WORKS g 79 NEW BOOKS AND BOOKS LATELY PUBLISHED 880
MISCELLANEOUS ' m BUSINESS CARDS ...... 897
BUSINESS FOR SALE _ 900 ASSISTANTS WANTED 9 QC
BOOKS FOR SALE m
BOOKS WANTED TO PURCHASE m
St. Dunstan's House, E.C. July 15, 1890.
St . Dunstan ' s House , E . C . July 15 , 1890 .
Iotrenuous As Have Been The Efforts Made...
IOTRENUOUS as have been the efforts made ^ during recent years in the cause of popular
education , and signal as has been the advance in many directions , there is still , it seems , at
least one important department of latter-day activity in which crudeness and incompetence
are rather the rule than the exception . The artistic science of illustration is , we learn , in
a state of deplorable decadence . Indeed , so far has it degenerated that it is now what the
late Mr . Carlyle once called * an infatuated blotch of insincere ignorance and a mere
distress to an earnest and well-instructed eye . ' Illustrated journalism is a confessed failure ,
and our book illustrations are as a rule something worse than useless . At any rate , that is
the opinion to which Mr . Joseph Pennell gives emphatic expression in the current number of
the Contemporary Review . None will dispute Mr . Pennell's authority to judge and speak ,
but his conclusions are rather startling . People have been hugging the belief that this
country had really made some advance in the art of illustration since , let us say , Thackeray
exercised his sportive pencil for the National Standard , or Mr . Ingram issued the first
number of the Illustrated London News . But Mr . Pennell finds that ' while the number of
illustrated publications has increased enormously , and has never been so large as it is
now , the standard of illustration ( that is , in England , of course ) has never been" so
deplorably low . With illustrators technically ignorant , art critics encouraging them in this
ignorance , publishers paying them for it , and a public believing in it , the outlook is
certainly not the brightest . ' Assuredly not , and the situation is one to make us pause and
consider . Ignorance is so serious a thing , and ignorance , according to Mr . Pennell , is at the
bottom of the whole trouble . The majority of prisons , he says , who draw for the daily
and weekly press and illustrate books are not artists at all in the proper sense of the word
They are self-taught—that is to say they are . not taught at all . They Mf come from architects '
— ' — — — ^ V ^^ ^ \ WJ offices or wood engravers' workshops—* in fact , from every V p lace excepting J . O where they ~ - ~*~ 'J should "" VU 1 U ,
come from—a well-conducted school , ' and the result is botching . The English illustrator
has no style , no technique , and when he happens to have an idea he does not know how to
express it . This is lamentableand an evil to literature as well as an injury , to artfor in
these daya the man of letters and the , illustrator stand on a footing of interdependency .
Happily , however , Mr . Pennell is not without a remedy , and it seems an exceedingly simple
one . He would have our would-be educators themselves educated . Drawing should be
taught universally in every school , and then such pupils as showed any talent should be
sent to a school of art , or atelier . Then we should have technique j and our illustrators would no
longer be ' messing about' struggling with conceptions they cannot express . We wish
Mr . Pennell all success in carrying out his scheme .
But here an interesting question arises . Technique in art corresponds to style in
literature . Now , the majority of our great writers have been masters of style , but not all . It is
possible to be a great writer r and still be no stylist . Critics are almost unanimous in
placing Walter Scott at the head of the novelists of the world ; they are quite aa
» 1 M . unanimous in admitting that he had little or nothing of that ineffable charm known as style .
Art and literature are twin sisters striving for the same objects , though by different means .
Is it possible for an illustrator to be great without being a master of technique!—that is ,
can he be truly imaginative ? And is it not possible to overrate mere dexterity of hand I
The firat essential of illustrations , we take
it , is not so much that they shall be faultlessly
-
-
Citation
-
Publishers’ Circular (1880-1890), July 15, 1890, page 858, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/pc/issues/tec_15071890/page/4/
-