Explores a vital aspect of British Romanticism, the role of illustration in Romantic-era literary texts and visual culture.

"This collection of essays takes a fresh look at the important role of illustration in Romantic literature. The late eighteenth century saw an explosion of illustrated editions of literary classics and the emergence of a new culture of literary art, including the innovative literary galleries. The impact of these developments on the reading and viewing of literary texts is explored in a series of case studies covering poetry, historical texts, drama, painting, reproductive prints, magazines and ephemera. Romanticism and Illustration argues for a more detailed study of illustration which includes the context of a wider circulation of images across different media. The modern understanding of the word 'illustration' fails to convey the complex relationship between the artist, the engraver, the publisher, the text and the audience in Romantic Britain. In teasing out the implications of this dynamic cultural matrix, this book opens up a new field of Romantic studies"--

According to Charles Dickens, real love is “blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust . . . giving up your whole soul to the smiter.” Oscar Wilde said of love: “You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” And Rainer Maria Rilke advised: “Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” Like Dickens, Wilde, and Rilke, countless writers throughout history have attempted to encapsulate the essence of love through their words. But the theme of love is not restricted to the medium of the written word; love has also launched billions of images. The Look of Love is a celebration of love through the ages, gathering more than one hundred illustrations from the flirtatious to the kitsch, the charming to the ironic. The vintage imagery is drawn from a huge range of sources—fashion magazines, medieval illumination manuscripts, book covers, paintings, and cartoons—and it ranges from exquisite depictions of courtly love in the Middle Ages to the pulp novels of the twentieth century, from elves in fairyland to a honeymoon in space. Great lovers from literature—Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, Vishnu and Lakshmi, among others—are lavishly represented alongside a host of first kisses, assignations in the garden, moonlight serenades, and walks down the aisle. A gorgeous pictorial survey of how artists from around the world and throughout time have visually imagined love, The Look of Love will make the perfect gift for any beloved with an eye for art.

About Romantic art from the 18th-19th centuries.

A lively, richly illustrated study of iconic caricatures, showing the interrelationship between art, satire and politics in the Romantic period.

This volume presents 115 drawings and paintings from the holdings of collector Karen B. Cohen. The 19th-century French and English works include landscapes, portraits, figure compositions, and still lifes by great artists of the romantic period and of the Barbizon and Realist schools, beginning with Prud'hon and ending with Seurat. Among the highlights is a group of little known works by Courbet and a series of cloud studies by Constable. Ives (curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) provides documentation and commentary for each work, placing it within the context of the artist's development and connecting it to contemporary artistic trends and innovations. Curator Elizabeth E. Barker contributed entries on Constable and Bonington. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Explores the developing cultural tensions and connections that created a 'sister-art' movement between creative visual art and its literary counterparts.