{"product_id":"9780817386979","title":"Artistic Liberties: American Literary Realism and Graphic Illustration, 1880-1905","description":"\u003ci\u003eArtistic Liberties\u003c\/i\u003e is a landmark study of the illustrations that originally accompanied now-classic works of American literary realism and the ways editors, authors, and illustrators vied for authority over the publications.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Though today, we commonly read major works of nineteenth-century American literature in unillustrated paperbacks or anthologies, many of them first appeared as magazine serials, accompanied by ample illustrations that sometimes made their way into the serials’ first printings as books. The graphic artists creating these illustrations often visually addressed questions that the authors had left for the reader to interpret, such as the complexions of racially ambiguous characters in \u003ci\u003eUncle Tom’s Cabin\u003c\/i\u003e. The artists created illustrations that depicted what outsiders saw in Huck and Jim in \u003ci\u003eAdventures of Huckleberry Finn\u003c\/i\u003e, rather than what Huck and Jim learned to see in one another. These artists even worked against the texts on occasion—for instance, when the illustrators reinforced the same racial stereotypes that writers such as Paul Laurence Dunbar had intended to subvert in their works.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Authors of American realism commonly submitted their writing to editors who allowed them little control over the aesthetic appearance of their work. In his groundbreaking \u003ci\u003eArtistic Liberties\u003c\/i\u003e, Adam Sonstegard studies the illustrations from these works in detail and finds that the editors employed illustrators who were often unfamiliar with the authors’ intentions and who themselves selected the literary material they wished to illustrate, thereby taking artistic liberties through the tableaux\u003cbr\u003e they created.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Sonstegard examines the key role that the appointed artists played in visually shaping narratives—among them Mark Twain’s \u003ci\u003ePudd’nhead Wilson\u003c\/i\u003e, Stephen Crane’s \u003ci\u003eThe Monster\u003c\/i\u003e, and Edith Wharton’s \u003ci\u003eThe House of Mirth\u003c\/i\u003e—as audiences tended to accept their illustrations as guidelines for understanding the texts. In viewing these works as originally published, received, and interpreted, Sonstegard offers a deeper knowledge not only of the works, but also of the realities surrounding publication during this formative period in American literature.","brand":"University of Alabama Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47128625840368,"sku":"9780817386979","price":49.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780817386979_p0.jpg?v=1763747362","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780817386979","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}