Words & Pictures

A new book by Jenny Uglow takes a look at what the author calls a "peculiarly British tradition," the close relationship between many Brit literary texts and their illustrators.

I haven't read the book, but a notice for it caught my eye in yesterday's Financial Times.

Ms Uglow, who grew up in Cumbria, is of course perfectly entitled to focus her attentions in such a study upon her own nation's literary traditions: the relationship between Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel, for example.

But the tradition of great narrative illustration is hardly confined to the British isles. Even when that is where the texts came from!

The classic illustrated version of Treasure Island is still that by which N.C. Wyeth illuminated R.L. Stevenson's story, after all. And Wyeth (1882-1945) was as American as Stevenson was a Scot.

Just thought I'd mention it.