From the Familiar to the New: Frontispiece Engravings to Fiction in England from 1690 to 1740

Abstract

AbstractAs an emerging genre in eighteenth‐century England, the novel was characterised by playfulness and experimentation. In many cases illustrators responded in kind, matching verbal with visual inventiveness. Examples of graphic illustration that capture this spirit of innovation feature throughout this special issue of the Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies. This article asks what we can learn, conversely, from instances in which an illustration closely followed an earlier design for the same title, or a particular graphic image continued to illustrate a novel over time, unchanged from one edition to the next.