Illustrating History / Illustrer l’histoire

Last Friday, I attended an international conference at the Université de Valenciennes, in Northern France which aimed to explore the relationship between history, the visual arts and the act of illustrating. Central to this symposium was the exchange about the status, form and function of such illustrations in a variety of media, whether early modern prints or contemporary graphic novels. (Program for the day is here. ) There were speakers from Columbia, the US, France and the UK and there was a very good mix of beautiful and thought provoking talks.

My own paper was called "Depicting Ancient Civilizations in Chambers’s Encyclopaedia."

The abstract: In the 19th century, there was wide-spread public interest in ancient history generated by archeological discoveries such as the Rosetta Stone and the palace at Knossos, in Crete. It was also influenced by foreign trade relationships with countries such as China and India that were known to have continuous centuries-old civilisations preceding the dominance of European nations. The Scottish firm, W. & R. Chambers was a well-known for educational publishing and in the 1860s and 1890s produced two editions of Chambers’s Encyclopaedia: A dictionary of universal knowledge for the people, with lengthy entries covering ancient civilisations with significant numbers of illustrations depicting these topics. This paper will discuss how ancient civilisations in Egypt and China were depicted through wood engravings, maps and other graphic elements, comparing how entries and representations of these ancient civilisations evolved between these editions. It will also examine the influence of wider trends in of book illustration and the growing “popular markets” for encyclopaedias during this period. Finally it will look at the firm’s philosophy of self-improvement, progress and understanding of history, as depicted in specific entries, and how the wording and illustrations reflect the firm’s philosophy. This proposal seeks address the conference theme question: How does illustrated history convey ideological and institutional discourses through encyclopaedias? Images in presentation will be drawn mainly from these two sources:

-Findlater, A. Ed. (1861-1868). Chambers's Illustrated Encyclopaedia: a dictionary of universal knowledge for the people. First edition. Edinburgh: W.& R. Chambers.

-Patrick, D. Ed. (1888-1892). Chambers's Illustrated Encyclopaedia: a dictionary of universal knowledge for the people. Second edition. Edinburgh: W.& R. Chambers.