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Friday 9 January 2009

A power to enthral

Henrietta Bredin on how book illustrations can bring the narrative to life

So why don’t more publishers commission illustrations for both fiction and non-fiction aimed at anyone over primary school age? There are some interesting design choices being made — Persephone Books with their enticing endpapers and matching bookmarks, Virago’s new reprints of modern classics with wittily acute choices of cover design: Biba’s Barbara Hulanicki for Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann for example. But this is just wrapping. Visionary commissioning seems to have become the lone preserve of the Folio Society, long may it flourish.

Publishing director David Hayden describes the process of matching writer to illustrator as a ‘long conversation’ and says that the hardest road often produces the best results. He admits that, in the planning for an edition of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (available in November), they were ‘pushed really hard’ by the author, looking at the work of numerous artists, about whom the author turned out to be extremely knowledgeable, before everyone was happy with the final choice (Peter Bailey, see illustration opposite).

The long conversations must be particularly rewarding when the writers concerned are still alive. Kazuo Ishiguro was apparently delighted with Finn Campbell-Notman’s illustrations for The Remains of the Day, while by contrast Patrick Süskind was adamant that there should be no illustration of any kind for Perfume (might a scratch ’n’ sniff flyleaf have been an option?). The Folio Society is wise enough to know when to leave well alone, as in the Molesworth books — unimaginable without Ronald Searle — or Erich Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives, where the original drawings by Walter Trier have been retained in all their quirky, late 1920s charm.

Their ideas are highly imaginative too, backed up by impeccable research. A planned edition of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet will have illustrations based on contemporary photographs of Egypt, while Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian will take a combination approach, decorative but representational. There are so many nautical buffs out there, ready to pounce on the tiniest misrepresentation of a tight-rigged futtock shroud that the greatest care must be taken to get the details right.

And on my own wish list? A new edition of Sacheverell Sitwell’s Valse des Fleurs please, bound in violet silk with eau de nil endpapers, exquisitely decorated and embellished throughout by Lawrence Mynott.

More articles from: Henrietta Bredin | this section

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