The techniques and art of children’s book illustration developed dramatically in Victorian and Edwardian times. While an increasing emphasis on children’s enjoyment of their books heightened the quality of book design and illustrations, significant improvements in the techniques of illustration reproduction allowed for more detailed and complex pictures and a wider variety of media. In addition, remarkable artists contributed to children’s books, bringing influences from the artistic movements of the time and creating works which were significant for later children’s books’ illustrators or writer-illustrators, such as Potter.
A major technical advance was the invention of colour printing from woodblocks in the 1830s, which eased the process of colour picture reproduction, previously done by hand (Salisbury and Styles 2012, p. 14). Cole’s carefully designed Home Treasury (1843), which did much to popularise fairy tales among the Victorian readership, was among the first to use this technique (Butts 1995, pp. 88-89). Another important title, published around the mid-nineteenth century, is Lear’s Book of Nonsense (1846), enjoyed by Potter, in which Lear’s own illustrations played an important role.
Due to further developments in printing technology and the contributions of outstanding artists, the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century have been named the “golden age of children’s books” (Salisbury and Styles ibid. p. 18; Briggs and Butts 1995, p. 163). Perhaps the most significant name in relation to printing techniques is that of the printer Evans (1826-1905). As Salisbury and Styles (ibid. p. 17) and Carpenter and Pritchard (ibid. p. 170) explain, Evans perfected the processes of colour wood engraving, thereby obtaining results which contemporary artists considered superior to those of chromolithography, commonly used at the time. All three renowned artists of this period, Caldecott (1846-1886), Greenaway (1846-1901) and Crane (1845-1915) worked with Evans. These artists are dubbed “Britain’s great children’s illustrators” (Briggs and Butts 1995, p. 165), because of their significant contribution to the development of children’s book illustration in the Victorian period and afterwards. According to Salisbury and Styles (2012, p. 16), Caldecott, considered the creator of the modern picture book because of the complementary text-illustration interaction in his work, influenced the work of many later artists, including Potter. Crane’s style drew on Japanese art and the
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Aesthetic movement, and emphasised the visual, rather than the conceptual connection between word and image (ibid. p. 17). Taylor (1989, p. 64) claims that Potter greatly admired Crane’s style and indeed there is evidence in Potter’s correspondence that her childhood reading included books illustrated by Crane (see Letter to Fish, in Taylor 1989, p. 369) and that when considering publishing a nursery rhyme book, she projected it to be “in a style between Caldecott’s & [Crane’s] the Baby’s Opera” (Letter to Norman Warne, in Taylor 1989, p. 66). Greenaway achieved popularity with her books Under the Window (1879) and The
Pied Piper of Hamelin (1888). Potter seems to have appreciated her work, though not
to the same extent as Caldecott’s and Crane’s, stating that the “pictures are charming, but compared to Caldecott’s – [Greenaway] could not draw” (Letter to Overton, in Taylor 1989, p. 441). Although it has been claimed that until the late nineteenth century, nothing of equal value to these three artists’ works was published (Carpenter and Pritchard 1984, pp. 411), children’s books in the second half of the nineteenth century benefitted from the work of many other accomplished artists. These included Tenniel, the illustrator of Carroll’s Alice books (1865, 1871); Cruikshank, who had illustrated the 1823 English edition of the Brothers Grimms’ tales and also illustrated his own versions of fairy tales; Thackeray, who drew the pictures for his Rose and
the Ring; Doyle, the illustrator of Ruskin’s 1851 King of the Golden River, and
Arthur Hughes, associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who illustrated works by Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hughes and MacDonald (Briggs and Butts 1995, p. 163; Carpenter and Pritchard 1984, pp. 137, 157, 263, 461, 521).
From 1890 to 1914, developments in colour printing allowed artists more freedom in their choice of medium and effects, which resulted in remarkable works. According to Whalley and Chester (1988), the reproduction of watercolour painting (Potter’s preferred medium) was made possible by the half-tone colour printing process (also known as trichromatic, or four-colour printing process). Lavishly illustrated gift- books were produced using this process (p. 248) whose detailed pictures, for instance, by Rackham and Dulac, challenged children to examine and interpret the images, and not only the texts, of their books (Briggs 1995, p. 182). Other illustrators of note include William Heath Robinson, who illustrated Andersen and his own
Adventures of Uncle Lubin (1902) and Charles Robinson, who illustrated the first
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Another phenomenon in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century children’s book design, the increasing popularity of small-format books, is particularly relevant for an analysis of Potter’s works. Stevenson (2003) explains that throughout the nineteenth century the most common format was the large quarto, as a small format was associated with cheap reading material and therefore considered less prestigious by the middle-class readership. However, these attitudes changed in the 1890s, particularly due to the publication of a series of small, beautifully-bound books for children by Kelmscott Press, which showed that such books may be not only inexpensive to produce, but also “fashionable” (pp. 13-15). Several small-format series of children’s books were published then, including The Banbury Cross, The
Little Folks’ Favourite Library and The Dumpy Books for Children. The latter,
published by Richards, is especially relevant in relation to Potter because it included Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo (1899). Sambo featured the layout that Potter was to use for her own books, namely, a short amount of text and an illustration facing each other on each double spread. It also used the artistic device of surrounding the images with “unstructured” white space, introduced by the Uptons’ “Golliwog” series (1895-1909). Sambo sold well and was followed by numerous similar book series, including The Bairn Books (1901 onwards), The Oogley Oo Books (1902),
The Little One’s Library (1902), The Rosebud Series (1902) and The Children’s Gem Library (1902) (ibid. pp. 17-18, 24). This popularity of small-format books was
remarked upon by Potter, who later stated: “… there began to be a vogue for small books, and I thought “Peter” might do as well as some that were being published” (qtd. on p. 12). This no doubt contributed to her choice of format for her books, a decision which Stevenson characterises as “solid business sense” (p. 26).
In conclusion, the Victorian and Edwardian times witnessed a significant development of CL. The impact of contemporary ideas about children and their education is visible in the content and form of CL, for instance, in the debates regarding the proportion of instruction and entertainment, or rationality and fantasy, to which children should be exposed. Moreover, political and social developments influenced the creation of particular genres, such as the adventure tale, the school story and the family story. Finally, technical advances and the increasing emphasis on children’s enjoyment of their books enabled great improvements in book illustrations. This section relates to Potter’s life and works, firstly, in terms of the
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influence of CL on her as a child. Her creativity and imagination were no doubt developed by her contact with imaginative literature, such as fairy tales and fantasies, and her artistic sensibility was shaped by the illustrations in the books she read. Secondly, Potter drew on the tradition of the animal tale to create an original type of story. Thirdly, technical advances in colour printing techniques ultimately enabled the reproduction of her watercolours in her books, and these constitute an essential part of her creative output. Finally, the recognisable format and layout of her books can be related to contemporary developments in book design.