Facing the Text
Facing the Text
Extra-Illustration, Print Culture, and Society in Britain 1769–1840
by Lucy Peltz
Lucy Peltz explores the practice of extra-illustration in relation to the popularization of antiquarianism, the commercialization of print culture, the reception of engraved portraiture, and the rise of the amateur, the collector, and the connoisseur.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thousands of books were customized with prints and drawings in a practice called extra-illustration. These books were often massively extended, lavishly bound, and prized by their owners as objects of display, status, and exchange. The scale of these compilations as well as their interdisciplinary nature -- at once literary texts, printed books, art collections, and indexes of visual culture -- have typically excluded them from histories of art and literature.
In this book, Lucy Peltz maps a history of extra-illustration and its social and cultural meanings, providing a fascinating account of the practice itself and the often colourful personalities who engaged in it. The remarkable contents of key extra-illustrated books are explored, along with the broader historical and commercial contexts in which they were produced and enjoyed.
- 424 pages
- full color throughout
- 100+ images
- 11.25" x 10"
- hardcover; ISBN 978-0-87328-261-1; $150.00
About the author: Lucy Peltz is Senior Curator of Eighteenth-Century Collections and Head of Collections Displays (Tudor to Regency) at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Distributed in the UK and Europe by Manchester University Press
Selected books from the Huntington Library Press are now distributed by Angel City Press.
“Peltz gives a fascinating account of the milieu of cultivated amateurism in which [Grangerizing] originated.” “[Facing the Text] has added a new and original chapter to the social history of Britain.” |