Book Buying

[poliphilo]

We go to the bookshop to buy Jane Austen. The Complete Works.

And we see this hardback boxed set, with the texts printed on Bible paper edged in gold (quite unnecessary) costing no more than a clutch of decent paperbacks.

What's not to like?

Well- one thing really; they have the early 20th century illustrations by Hugh Thomson- which are very charming but wrong.

I'd rather not have my novels illustrated. I want to imagine things my own way. Only kids books should be illustrated.

And to illustrate Austen is a violation of her aesthetic. Her lightness and swiftness are bound up with her refusal of description. What does Mr Bingley look like? He has a black hat and a blue coat.

Hugh Thomson's pictures are all about bonnets and frocks. Austen could care less.

But I've seen the Austen films. My vision is already corrupted. I can't help but see her characters as Emma Thompson, Kate Winslett, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. Pemberley is forever Lyme Park.

What further harm can Thomson do?

And hard covers, Bible paper, gold edges.....

We buy them.

We also buy a copy of Anne Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolfo (roughly contemporary with Austen.) I read it on the train coming back from town. Radcliffe is all description. Her heroine lives in the foothills of the Pyrenees and spends her time collecting botanical specimens and playing the lute in mountain glades. Sooner or later she's going to be abducted by brigands and it can't happen a page too soon.

Comments

[geodesus-christ.livejournal.com]

How do you feel about the John Tenniel drawings in Alice in Wonderland? I've read that they're really important to the book for a variety of reasons; personally I think they're interesting but they take away as much as they add.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think of Tenniel as (almost) the co-author of Alice. I love his work.

But then I was exposed to the Tenniel-illustrated Alice as a very small child. It's like a sacred text to me and I can't be objective about it.

When I was at school they had these old bound copies of Punch and I used to leaf through them for the Tenniel cartoons.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I prefer the Rackham ones myself. They have more of a nighmarish quality which fits the text.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Rackham is certainly wonderful, but- well- as far as I'm concerned, "the first cut is the deepest."