Page 86 - Gullivers

J.J. Grandville
An edition illustrated by Edwin John Prittie was published in the USA
at much the same time as the edition illustrated by Bull, but this is for a younger readership, with more amusing elements of the story played up, in particular
in the colour illustrations, and like some other artists who used a mixture of colour and black and white, it is
the seemingly plainer drawings that
are more dramatically vigorous.
Edward Bawden was one of the
most highly-regarded English illustrators and designers of his age; his techniques included line drawing, woodcuts and lithography and he was also noted as
a watercolourist and a designer of ceramic tiles, murals and posters. His eye for
an arresting angle in a picture would have served him well in his murals and poster designs, and in his Gulliver’s Travels his play on perspective brings a new interpretation to scenes that may be over-familiar.
He shows Gulliver from the Lilliputian point of view, with mighty legs and trunk and a smaller head as his body recedes into the distance. Especially striking are the stylised images of Gulliver stepping over the city walls and sitting at his table, winching up tiny barrels of wine.
Bawden illustrated the first two journeys of the travels, and the voyages
to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, or the
voyage to Lilliput alone, tend to feature solely in post-1940 editions. Also dealing with the first two journeys, Robin Jacques’s edition in black and white ink, touched with very delicate washes of
blue and brown in places, are arresting, showing close-up juxtaposing of
large heads and small bodies, or even
legs and feet which is all we see of
a Brobdingnagian to whom Gulliver attempts to explain himself. Nevertheless, these stippled and cross-hatched images are, like those of Edward Bawden,
more likely to have adult or young adult rather than child appeal. But waves that pound Gulliver’s ship as it lurches to the rocks will ring true with any viewer, and the tightly focused image of Gulliver’s head as he regards his tiny captors also offers insights into the predicament of
Lemuel Gulliver. These, and subsequent editions of Gulliver’s Travels, benefited
from post-World War Two developments in photolithographic processes, giving Jacques in his ‘Gulliver’ the latitude to create in fine pen, drawings that resemble wood engravings.
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