The Look of Love: Romantic Illustration through the Ages

This new book is a celebration of love through the ages, gathering together more than 100 romantic 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 illuminated 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 20th century; from elves in fairy-land to a honeymoon in space. Great lovers from literature—Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, Vishnu and Lakshmi—are lavishly represented alongside a host of first kisses, assignations in the garden, moonlight serenades, and walks down the aisle.