【6月11日】Kwinten Van De Walle：Book Illustration in Eighteenth-CenturyLiterary Subscription Editions

In the last two decades, research on print culture and print media hasfirmly established the central importance of illustrations in theproduction, dissemination, and consumption of literary texts ineighteenth-century Britain. Because illustrations represented aconsiderable investment, however, commissioning and printingillustrations carried potential economic risks. This guest lecture willfocus on subscription publication, a strategy regularly used bypublishers to gauge the market and to secure the financial viability ofa publishing venture. It will specifically focus on illustrated editions ofliterary texts published by subscription. Examining publishingprospectuses and advertisements alongside the material illustratededitions, it will explore the flexibility and adaptability required ofbookseller-publishers to navigate a highly competitive market. It willdemonstrate how the study of the marketing and production practicesemployed in the publication of illustrated subscription editionsprovides new insights into the different ways in which visual mediaand illustration technologies impacted the economic underpinningsof the production of literary texts.