SOURCE: Skilton, David. “The Relation between Illustration and Text in the Victorian Novel: A New Perspective.” In Word and Visual Imagination, edited by Karl Josef Holtgen, Peter M. Daly, and Wolfgang Lottes, pp. 303-25. Erlangen: Universitatsbund Erlangen-Nurnberg, 1988.

In the following essay, Skilton provides an overview of critical writing on Victorian illustrated fiction.

Writer and Artist at Work

By far the largest amount of work on illustrations to Victorian fiction concerns the important issue of the generation of the illustrated work—whether or not the writer directed the visual artist in detail, or on the contrary incorporated suggestions arising from the illustrative drawings. Investigations along these lines contribute greatly to our understanding of the institution of the novel in the literary marketplace, and teach us the historical importance of illustration in an account of the consumption of Victorian fiction.

All such work examines the suitability of illustration to text...