Illustrations were an integral part of Mark Twain’s published works. They embellished his stories, informed the reader, and often reflected his humor. However, today’s fictional novels rarely include illustrations beyond the cover and fly leaf. In a digital publishing world, illustrations often do not translate well to the digital format. My research paper will delineate the reasons that illustrations were relevant and necessary for the 19th century publication and why they are less relevant in the digital age. I will show that illustrations played an essential part in the success of Mark Twain’s books because he made them an integral part of his writing, because of the subscription publishing model of his era, and because of Twain’s dependence on them to describe his characters. However, the digital publishing market of today has lessened the impact of illustrations in modern literary works.
Over 20 different artists/cartoonists were employed over the course of Mark Twain’s career to illustrate his books and articles. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contained 174 illustrations and the Adventures of Tom Sawyer had 160. These two books could be perceived as children’s books, which, even today, often contain illustrations. But his writings for the adult genre were also heavily illustrated. Roughing It, his travelogue of the untamed regions of the western territories and the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, contained 300 illustrations in its original printing and Innocents Abroad, his best-seller, contained 235 illustrations. Though the illustrations in Twain’s novels sometimes seem informal by today’s glossy, brightly colored standards, they were actually very deliberately sketched and carefully placed within his texts. Il…
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…d on a shelf, cherished as something valued by its owner and taken as a sign of who they are and what matters to them, a token of their identity.” (315) I agree with this description but I prefer to read on an e-reader for convenience, however, I still love my books and they will remain a treasured possession. They will probably gather dust on my bookshelves until one day when my children will inherit them and they will either be prized antiques or fodder for the refuse pile.I believe books in printed form will always exist and those with illustration will likely continue to be more popular in printed form than in electronic format. I also believe that the electronic devices that we read on will eventually find a way to give illustrations, maps, tables, and pictures a greater and more appealing place in the e-books of the future, but they are not there yet.
