Thomas Stothard, Milton and the Illustrative Vignette: The Houghton Library Designs for The Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas

Abstract

Introducing a hitherto neglected set of illustrations of Milton's companion poems ‘L'Allegro and ‘Il Penseroso, this essay focuses on an ephemeral annual publication and the ways in which the twenty-four engraved illustrations that accompanied each number from the late 1780s contributed to the fashioning of the reputations of both the texts visualized and their authors. Designed by the prolific visual artist, Thomas Stothard (1755–1834), these vignettes featured in Thomas Baker's diary-cum-almanac, The Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas (1779–1826), and reflected Stothard's sensitive interpretation of texts then widely read or recognized as cultural classics. Concentrating on the set of vignettes that the artist contributed to the penultimate number of Baker's diary, the essay contextualizes Stothard's original coloured wash-drawings for the engraved vignettes (held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University) in terms of his earlier designs of Milton's poems that he contributed to Baker's annual almost thirty years earlier. Not only is the development of the illustrative vignette and its paratextual function examined, but the essay also sheds light on how Stothard's designs contributed to the formation of the literary canon.