Extra-illustration or grangerisation is the process whereby texts, normally in their published state, are customized by the incorporation of thematically linked prints, watercolors, and other visual materials.

History

Page from James Granger illustrated by A

Extra-illustration was a vibrant and widespread fashion in Britain and America during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While there was no set canon of titles chosen for extra-illustration, certain themes and subjects occur repeatedly. From the 1770s to the 1830s, most of the books selected were patriotic in tone and antiquarian or historical in subject. Titles ranged from biography, county histories, and topography to travel, natural history, and Shakespeare. As the pastime became more popular, the genre became more diverse but the scope remained the same: places and people, chronicles of contemporary life, the lives of artistic and theatrical celebrities, and a variety of then-modern writers, notably Byron and Dickens. Lucy Peltz, ''Facing the Text: Extra-Illustration, Print Culture, and Society in Britain, 1769–1840''. San Marino, California: Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 2017. Distributed in the UK by

Manchester University Press Manchester University Press is the university press of the University of Manchester, England, and a publisher of academic books and journals. Manchester University Press has developed into an international publisher. It maintains its links with t ...

. In 1892, Tredwell published a treatise on the love of book illustrating as a refined pursuit and a signifier of high culture.

Terminology

In Britain, extra-illustration is frequently called ''grangerising'' or ''grangerisation'', after James Granger whose seminal book ''Biographical History of England from Egbert the Great to the Revolution''—published in 1769 without illustrations—quickly prompted a fashion for portrait-print collecting and the incorporation of prints and drawings into the printed text. However, the term ''grangerise'' only came into use from the 1880s, more than a century after Granger's death. Ironically, for the process of book customization that carries his name, Granger himself never grangerized a book.

Examples

One of the first and certainly the most influential example was made by Richard Bull (MP) who corresponded regularly with James Granger about his print collection and its organisation according to Granger's typologies. The Bull-Granger, as Richard Bull's extra-illustrated copy is often called, is now in the collection of the

Huntington Library The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington and Arabella Huntington in San Marino, California, United State ...

in California. A large collection of extra-illustrated books was formed during the same period by Anthony Morris Storer who bequeathed them to

Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...

in 1799. In the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, a particularly impressive and early example is the copy of ''Some Account of London'' by

Thomas Pennant Thomas Pennant (16 December 1798) was a Welsh natural history, naturalist, traveller, writer and antiquarian. He was born and lived his whole life at his family estate, Downing Hall, near Whitford, Flintshire, in Wales. As a naturalist he had ...

, extra-illustrated by John Charles Crowle. Crowle filled fourteen folio volumes, bound in gold-tooled red leather, with a collection of over 3347 prints and drawings of London topography and of portrayals of historical events and people connected with the history of London. It was bequeathed to the British Museum in 1811 where it is registered under number G,1.1. Perhaps the largest project in the genre are the extra-illustrated books and related materials produced by Alexander Hendras Sutherland and his wife Charlotte, née Hussey, between c.1795 and 1839. The Sutherland collection is now shared between the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street in Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University ...

and the

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, it is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in ...

. Other examples include an 1868 edition of

Aloysius Bertrand Louis Jacques Napoléon Bertrand, better known by his pen name Aloysius Bertrand (20 April 1807 — 29 April 1841), was a French Romantic poet, playwright and journalist. He is famous for having introduced prose poetry in French literature,Stuar ...

's prose-poem collection ''

Gaspard de la Nuit ''Gaspard de la nuit'' (subtitled ''Trois poèmes pour piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand''), M. 55 is a suite of piano pieces by Maurice Ravel, written in 1908. It has three movements, each based on a poem or ''fantaisie'' from the collection '' ...

'', illustrated with watercolors by

Louis Émile Benassit Louis Émile Benassit (20 December 1833 – 9 August 1902) was a French artist and raconteur. He cut a colorful figure in the literary and artistic circles of Paris in the 1860s and 1870s, known equally for his satirical drawings and for his ...

and Lucien Pillot for Henri Breuil, a Dijon chocolatier, now in the collection of the Bibliothèque patrimoniale et d’étude de Dijon, and a copy of the Paul Meurice 1886 French translation of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', covered inside and out with watercolors painted by Pinckney Marcius-Simons in 1908, in the collection of the

Folger Shakespeare Library The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materia ...

in Washington, D.C., which has made all the images available online.

References

External links

* {{Book structure Illustration Collecting Book collecting Printmaking Prints (art)

History

Terminology

Examples

References

Further reading

External links