Picturebooks and wordless picturebooks: a brief history and background

Foundations were being laid for modern picturebooks many years ago: among the tombs of ancient Egypt and structures in Pompeii, stories were told using pictures in particular order.  One of the oldest examples, Trajan’s Column in Rome (fig.1) tells of Trajan’s successful battles during the second century AD (Salisbury & Styles, 2012: 10); and The Bayeux Tapestry (fig. 2) illustrates the Norman conquest; importantly reading in chronological order; left to right (McCloud, 1993: 12).   The modern printing press invented in the fifteenth century by Johannes Gutenberg, saw the rise of book printing (Palermo, 2014).  From the fifteenth century onwards, picturebooks began to appear, as ‘chapbooks’ (roughly assembled pages of text and randomly selected images) were sold by pedlars in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries (Salisbury and Styles, 2012: 12-13).  Commonly accepted as being the first children’s picturebook, Orbis Pictus (Comenius, circa 1657) illustrated words with pictures (Nodelman, 1988: 2).  In the late eighteenth century William Blake created children’s books combining text and image: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience (Salisbury, 2005: 9), when lithography was introduced, meaning colour no longer had to be added by hand.  But the nineteenth century saw beginnings of a golden age for colour printing; when children’s books began to flourish and book illustration became a recognised, valued art form (Salisbury, 2005: 10).  Funny Stories and Droll Pictures (Hoffmann, 1844) directly influenced modern picturebooks, with its somewhat violent themes depicting consequences of bad behaviour (Salisbury & Styles, 2012: 14); setting the tone for cross-over picturebooks to be discussed later.  Less fear arousing than moral focussed publications for children in the sixteenth century, nineteenth century children’s books took a more light hearted approach, as seen in Under the Window (Kate Greenaway, 1878) and Randolph Caldecott’s Picture books (1878-1884, British Library: n.d.).

Caldecott pioneered the interplay between pictures and words, which no longer duplicated but complimented each other (Salisbury & Styles, 2012: 16).  Unpatronising in approach by not focussing on moral lessons he consciously created them with adult and child appeal (Desmarais, 2006: xv); commonly becoming accepted as the founding father of picturebooks (Salisbury & Styles, 2012: 16).

The picturebook can be defined as being where words and pictures are of equal importance, but this can be expanded to include books with pictures not necessarily aimed at children and not conforming to modern conventions (Salisbury, 2015: 9).  

Figure 1 (top): Trajan's Column, detail, AD 113 (Source: crystalinks.com., n.d.)

Figure 2 (above): Bayeux Tapestry, 1080, fragment (Source: Kren, E., Marx, D., n.d., Web Gallery of Art, n.d.)

References:

British Library (n.d.) Help for Researchers: Historical Survey of Children’s Literature in the British Library [online] Available at: http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpsubject/literature/chillit/childhist/childhistorical.html [Accessed: 27 July, 2016]

Desmarais, R. (2006) Introduction.  Randolph Caldecott: His Books and illustrations for Young Readers.  Edmonton: University of Alberta Libraries.

McCloud, S. (1993) Understanding Comics: the invisible art.  New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc.

Nodelman, P. (1988) Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books [online]. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.  Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YHPmmt9VvF8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed: 3 August, 2016]

Palermo, E. (2014) Reference: Who Invented the Printing Press? [online].  In livescience.com.  Available at: http://www.livescience.com/43639-who-invented-the-printing-press.html [Accessed: 27 July, 2016]

Salisbury, M. (2005) Illustrating Children’s Books: Creating Pictures for Publication. London: Quarto Publishing Plc.

Salisbury, M. (2015) 100 Great Children’s Picturebooks.  London: Lawrence King Publishing Ltd.

Salisbury, M., & Styles, M. (2012) Children’s Picturebooks: The Visual Art of Storytelling. London: Lawrence King Publishing Ltd.

Images:

Crystalinks.com (n.d.) Trajan’s Column, fragment [image online]. Available at: http://www.crystalinks.com/trajanscolumn.html  [Accessed: 26 July, 2016]

Kren, E., Marx, D. (n.d.) The Bayeux Tapestry (c. 1080) Bayeux Tapestry fragment [image online].  In Wall Gallery of Art.  Available at: http://www.wga.hu/html_m/zzdeco/2tapestr/2bayeux/index.html  [Accessed: 26 July, 2016]