CHAPTER VII.
AUTHOR, ILLUSTRATOR, AND PUBLISHER.
ET us now consider shortly the Author, the Illustrator, and the Publisher, and their influence on the appearance and production of a book. If it be impossible in these days (and, in spite of the efforts of Mr. William Morris and others, it seems to be impossible) to produce a genuine book in all its details, it seems worth considering in what way the author can stamp it with his own individuality; also to what extent he is justified in making use of modern appliances.
How far, then, may the author be said to be responsible for the state of things just quoted? Theoretically, he is the man of taste and culture par excellence; he is, or should be, in most cases, the arbiter, the dictator to his publisher, the chooser of style. The book is his, and it is his business to decide in what form his ideas should become concrete; the publisher aiding his judgment with experience, governing the finance, and carrying out details. How comes it then that, with the present facilities for reproducing anything that the hand can put upon paper, the latter-day nineteenth-century author is so much in the hands of others as to the appearance of his book? It is because the so-called educated man has not been taught to use his hands as the missal-writers and authors of mediæval times taught themselves to use theirs. The modern author, who is, say, fifty years old, was born in an age of “advanced civilisation,” when the only method of expression for the young was one—“pothooks and hangers.” The child of ten years old, whose eye was mentally forming pictures, taking in unconsciously the facts of perspective and the like, had a pencil tied with string to his two first fingers until he had mastered the ups and downs, crosses and dashes, of modern handwriting, which has been accepted by the great, as well as the little, ones of the earth, as the best medium of communication between intelligent beings; and so, regardless of style, character, or picturesqueness, he scribbles away! So much for our generally straggling style of penmanship.
There is no doubt that the author of the future will have to come more into personal contact with the artist than he has been in the habit of doing, and that the distinction I referred to in the first chapter, between illustrations which are to be (1) records of facts, and (2) works of art, will have to be more clearly drawn.
Amongst the needs in the community of book producers is one that I only touch upon because it affects the illustrator:—That there should be an expert in every publishing house to determine (1) whether a drawing is suitable for publication; and (2) by what means it should be reproduced. The resources of an establishment will not always admit of such an arrangement; but the editors and publishers who are informed on these matters can easily be distinguished by the quality of their publications. By the substitution of process blocks for wood engravings in books, publishers are deprived to a great extent of the fostering care of the master wood engraver, to which they have been accustomed.
Amongst the influences affecting the illustrator, none, I venture to say, are more prejudicial than the acceptance by editors and publishers of inartistic drawings.
It would be difficult, I think, to point to a period when so much bad work was produced as at present. The causes have already been pointed out, the beautiful processes for the reproduction of drawings are scarcely understood by the majority of artists, publishers, authors, or critics. It is the misuse of the processes in these hurrying days, which is dragging our national reputation in the mire and perplexing the student.