Stuart Sillars

A richly illustrated study of the interplay of word and image in representations of the English countryside, built environment, and domestic space during the interwar period. During the 1920s and 30s, words and pictures in print were the main way in which people received ideas and entertainment, the two working together in a great variety of forms. Many books of the twenties argued against the loss of the countryside because of suburban building. But the demand for post-war building was great and, following the lead of a government report, many books appeared that showed house designs, allowing readers to design or imagine their ownership. Book designs became attractive, helped by colourful dust jackets and internal pictures. Magazines developed individual talents and special interests for both men and women. And, at the periods close, word and image were combined to publicise the growing RAF and give advice about protecting houses from bombing. In all these, words and images worked together as a complex form of art, communication, and entertainment.

This wide-ranging study traces the forces that drove the production and interpretation of visual images of Shakespeare's plays. Covering a rich chronological terrain, from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the midpoint of the nineteenth, Stuart Sillars offers a multidisciplinary, nuanced approach to reading Shakespeare in relation to image, history, text, book history, print culture and performance. The volume begins by relating the production imagery of Shakespeare's plays to other visual forms and their social frames, before discussing the design and operation of illustrated editions and the 'performance readings' they offer, and analysing the practical and theoretical foundations of easel paintings. Close readings of The Comedy of Errors, King Lear, the Roman plays, The Merchant of Venice and Othello provide detailed insight into how the plays have been represented visually, and are accompanied by numerous illustrations and a beautiful colour plate section.

Shakespeare's knowledge of the practices of visual art, its fundamental concepts and the surrounding debates is clear from his earliest works. This book explores this relationship, showing how key works develop visual compositions as elements of dramatic movement, construction of ideas, and reflections on the artifice of theatre and language. The Taming of the Shrew, Love's Labour's Lost, Richard II and A Midsummer Night's Dream are explored in detail, offering new insights into their forms, themes, and place in European traditions. The use of emblems is examined in Titus Andronicus and As You Like It; studies of Venus and Adonis, some sonnets and The Rape of Lucrece reveal different but related visual aspects; a later chapter suggests how the new relation between seeing and soliloquy in The Rape of Lucrece is developed in other plays. Extensively illustrated, the book explores Shakespeare's assimilation and exploration of visual traditions in structure, theme and idea throughout the canon.

OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. The book shows how the reception and remodelling of the works and the man directed the Victorian construction of identity, personal, national and aesthetic, as well as laying foundations that later Shakespeareans could continue, extend or reject. Shakespeare was one of the most pervasive intellectual, aesthetic, and social forces of the Victorian period, with the plays in print, performance, and as moral examples penetrating to every aspect of life in every social class and situation. Shakespeare and the Victorians offers an analytical survey of the main forms and paths of this presence. It begins with a discussion of the processes of editing and publishing the plays, embracing both cholarly and popular editions. It moves to consider performance styles, quoting original reviews to assess methods of acting and production. Music for the Shakespearean stage, now largely forgotten, is reassessed, as is the varied tradition of Shakespeare painting that extends far beyond the familiar images of the Pre-Raphaelites. Shakespearian themes dominate in the novel, especially the conflict between town and country and the changing status of women; poetry shows the power of Shakespeare in the use of iambic pentameter and the sonnet form. The plays are fragmented through the study of individual character and their use as moral compendia, and the search for 'Shakespeare the man' in biographies, portraiture and pilgrimages to the birthplace. A concluding chapter looks at the last two decades in terms of editing, performance, the renewed importance of the Sonnets, and new performance styles.

OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. The book shows how the reception and remodelling of the works and the man directed the Victorian construction of identity, personal, national and aesthetic, as well as laying foundations that later Shakespeareans could continue, extend or reject. Shakespeare was one of the most pervasive intellectual, aesthetic, and social forces of the Victorian period, with the plays in print, performance, and as moral examples penetrating to every aspect of life in every social class and situation. Shakespeare and the Victorians offers an analytical survey of the main forms and paths of this presence. It begins with a discussion of the processes of editing and publishing the plays, embracing both cholarly and popular editions. It moves to consider performance styles, quoting original reviews to assess methods of acting and production. Music for the Shakespearean stage, now largely forgotten, is reassessed, as is the varied tradition of Shakespeare painting that extends far beyond the familiar images of the Pre-Raphaelites. Shakespearian themes dominate in the novel, especially the conflict between town and country and the changing status of women; poetry shows the power of Shakespeare in the use of iambic pentameter and the sonnet form. The plays are fragmented through the study of individual character and their use as moral compendia, and the search for 'Shakespeare the man' in biographies, portraiture and pilgrimages to the birthplace. A concluding chapter looks at the last two decades in terms of editing, performance, the renewed importance of the Sonnets, and new performance styles.

Visualisation in Popular Fiction 1860-1960 explores the important but neglected tradition of illustrated fiction in English. It suggests new analytical approaches for its study by offering detailed discussions of a range of representative texts, including Mary Webb's Gone to Earth and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Among the issues and genres Sillars explores are:* Victorian `narrative' paintings* Edwardian fictional magazines* comic strips * illustrated children's stories* the translation of novels into film An insightful and highly informative work, Visualisation in Popular Fiction will be of value to students of literature, cultural studies, visual art and film.

Time and the visual sense were two essential preoccupations of the Victorians, and both were central to their presentations of Shakespeare's plays. In this extensive new study, Stuart Sillars examines multiple facets of this complex relationship. The desire for authenticity in production, in the work of Charles Kean and his followers, leads to elaborate sets that define and direct the performances' movement through time. Visual artists of all kinds fracture and extend the plays' movements, the Pre-Raphaelites through new techniques and approaches, illustrators through new forms of engraving and printing, and photographers through the emerging forms of the medium. The book also considers the multiple forms in which performances were recorded and re-created visually, and absorbed into the memories of their viewers. With many previously unpublished images, it draws together multiple fields to offer a new perspective on one of the most productive and various periods of Shakespeare activity.

Extending the Book introduces the largely-forgotten art of extra-illustration -- individually adding portraits or other illustrations to published books -- and explores what this personalized form of book design reveals about the history of reading.It includes a brief introduction to the concept of designing and creating a unique book by adding external material and an overview of the phenomenon's history and its heyday in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The works of Shakespeare -- the most popular single author for extra-illustration -- exemplify the practice as it changed over time.From the beginning, extra-illustrators had to defend the "exquisite handicraft" (in the words of an 1890 proponent) against accusations of "breaking up a good book to illustrate a worse one" (in the words of an 1892 critic). This book examines the art and the practice of extra-illustration, from crudely altered books to beautiful new creations.

Illustrations have been an important element of many of the most extensively read editions of Shakespeare's plays, from the frontispieces to Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition to the multiple images placed within the text of Victorian editions. Through symbols the illustrations have explored language and character; by allusion to earlier paintings they have offered critical readings; and by gesture, setting and costume they have redesigned the plays within the visual vocabulary of their own times. In all these ways they offer important exchanges with contemporary social, aesthetic and critical concerns, and, despite being largely ignored by scholars, are central to the plays' reception. Highly illustrated, including many images not previously reproduced, the book allows the reader to share the experience of early readers of the plays. Building on the author's earlier work in Painting Shakespeare it offers a fresh address to the tradition of visual criticism and assimilation of Shakespeare's plays.

This book explores key texts - Howards End , The Rainbow , and the poetry of Owen, Sassoon and Edward Thomas - to show the mingled continuation and rejection of convention as their characteristic achievement, exploring features often seen as failures. It also discusses the writing's increasing concern with the inadequacies of language, seeing it within the frame of contemporary society and deconstructive theory, and attempting to locate them in relation to high Modernism.

This book explores key texts - Howards End , The Rainbow , and the poetry of Owen, Sassoon and Edward Thomas - to show the mingled continuation and rejection of convention as their characteristic achievement, exploring features often seen as failures. It also discusses the writing's increasing concern with the inadequacies of language, seeing it within the frame of contemporary society and deconstructive theory, and attempting to locate them in relation to high Modernism.

Visualisation in Popular Fiction 1860-1960 explores the important but neglected tradition of illustrated fiction in English. It suggests new analytical approaches for its study by offering detailed discussions of a range of representative texts, including Mary Webb's Gone to Earth and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Among the issues and genres Sillars explores are:* Victorian `narrative' paintings* Edwardian fictional magazines* comic strips * illustrated children's stories* the translation of novels into film An insightful and highly informative work, Visualisation in Popular Fiction will be of value to students of literature, cultural studies, visual art and film.

An examination of the ways in which the artists and writers of the 1940s developed and extended approaches from earlier English romanticism to provide a direct and compassionate response to the reality of contemporary destruction.

This book describes the role of communication in business - including the effects of information technology - and aims to develop the skills necessary for effective business communications. It provides syllabus coverage for the following examinations - LCCI English for Business and English for Commerce (1st and 2nd levels); Pitman English for Business Communication (Intermediate and Advanced); RSA Communication in Business (Stages I and II); Group Secretarial Examinations; City and Guilds Communication Skills.