This document discusses developing a bibliographic model to better represent illustrations in early modern illustrated books. It summarizes key points about illustrations being overlooked historically but having a complex relationship with text. It proposes a model with two FRBR stacks for text and images linked by a "set" to capture variability between book copies. This would better represent books as individual physical objects while distinguishing images and text as distinct cultural objects.

1. Towards a bibliographic model of
illustrations in the early modern
illustrated book
John Bradley (King’s College
London) and Stephen Pigney
(Goldsmith’s College)
DH2012, Hamburg
18 July, 2012
1

2. Illustrations and Books
 Knapp 2003 (pg 9) claims that History of the Book
research has been "re-evaluating the relation of
books to texts", and upsetting previously
establishing understanding -- such as the meaning
of ideas such as author, text and reader.
 Knapp 2003 (pg 37) notes the "overwhelmingly
large amount of visual material to be found on the
pages of early modern English books", and notes
that English printers illustrated many of the books
they printed.
 Knapp, James A. (2003). Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England: the
representation of History in Printed Books. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
2

3.  http://www.bpi1700.org.uk
 “a database of thousands of prints and book
illustrations from early modern Britain in fully-
searchable form.”
 “The majority of images in the bpi1700 database
come from the extensive collection in the
Department of Prints and Drawings at the British
Museum. These have been supplemented by
various other items, most notably from the National
Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum.”
3

4. BPI1700 and the catalogue
raisonné
4

5. BPI1700’s data
5

6. 6

7. Illustrations in Early Modern
English Books
 Knapp (2003) claims that in the 1560s and 70s English printers
produced books on historical subjects that were substantially
illustrated. They became, he claims, the standard sources for
information about the past. (pg 2)
 Indeed, later in his book he notes the "overwhelmingly large amount
of visual material to be found on the pages of early modern English
books", and notes that English printers illustrated many of the books
they printed.
 Ruth Samson Luborsky and Elizabeth Morely Ingram catalogued more
than 5,000 woodcuts and engraving that appeared in English books
between 1536 and 1603.
 How should BPI1700’s model for prints be
integrated and extended to accommodate the
more complex world of images in early-modern
books?
7

8. Engraved title-page to Thomas
Heywood, Gynaikeion (1624)
Engraved portrait of George
Chapman, attributed to William
Hole; frontispiece to his translation,
The Whole Works of Homer (1616)

9. Illustration to John Raymond,
Mercurio Italico (1648)
Portrait of Mary I; illustration to
William Martyn, The Historie and
Lives of the Kings of England (1638)

10. Woodcut illustration from the 1563 edition of John
Foxe, Acts and Monuments

11. An example of an illustrative project: the title-page and one of the
plates to Baziliologia: A Booke of Kings (1618), a book consisting
of portraits of English monarchs

12. Frontispiece and title-page to the second edition of James Heath, A
Brief Chronicle of the Late Intestine War in the Three Kingdoms of
England, Scotland and Ireland (London, 1663)

13. List of illustrations to A Brief Chronicle (1663 edn);
including the frontispiece, the work contains 39
illustrations

14. 2.2 Second edition, expanded
(i.e. edition issued in 1664);
Globe copy U(?); Huntington
Library
2.1 Second edition;
Globe copy e; Harvard
University Library
1. First edition; Bodleian
Library

15. Title-page to first issue of
second edition
Title-page to second (expanded)
issue of second edition

16. Printing errors (common to both issues of
the second edition)
Verso Recto
Sig. Page Sig. Page
Nn2v 550 [Nn3r] 551
[Nn3v] [none] [Nn4r] 552
[Nn4v] [none] [Nn5r] 553
[Nn5v] 554 Oo1r 563
Oo1v 564 Oo2r 565
Oo2v 566 Oo3r 567
Oo3v 598 Oo4r 569
Oo4v 570 [Oo5r] 571

17. Portrait of James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby, in the
first issue of the second edition

18. Portrait of the Earl of Derby in the second
(expanded) issue of the second edition

19. The entry for the portrait of the Earl of Derby in the listing
of illustrations in the prefatory material; from the second
(expanded) issue.
A reader has corrected the page number to reflect the
actual place of the portrait in this issue.

20. Place of portrait of the Earl of Derby
in copies listed by Globe
Alexander Globe, Peter Stent, London Printseller entries
xxvi.a: Before addition of ‘563’ at lower right
xxvi.b: ‘563’ added at lower right
xxvii: ‘The valiant Earle of Darby’ with direction ‘fol. 33’
Position of image in each Globe copy
First issue Second issue
a Lacking O xxvi.b facing p. 563
b Lacking P xxvi.b facing p. 569
c xxvi.a facing p. 569; xxvii facing p. 568 Q xxvi.b facing p. 569
d Lacking R xxvi.b facing p. 563
e xxvi.b facing p. 569 S xxvi.b facing p. 563
f xxvi.b facing p. 563 T xxvi.b facing p. 469
g xxvii facing p. 568 U xxvi.b facing p. 563
V xxvi.b facing p. 569
W Lacking
X xxvi.b facing p. 425
Y xxvi.b facing p. 563
Z xxvi.b facing p. 569

21. Portrait of the Earl of Essex, from A Brief Chronicle

22. Portrait of the Earl of Essex, from Josiah Ricraft, A
Survey of England’s Champions (1647)

23. Portrait of Charles I, from A Brief Chronicle

24. BPI1700
 Impressions are actual
objects held by the
museum, and digital
surrogates of and
metadata about them were
provided for BPI1700 by
the BM.
 The project team
organised these into
works/plates, and
established states of that
plate as it was witnessed in
the surviving prints.
 They also assigned
subjects to the “work”.
 In BPI1700 Works are the
images created by the
engraver or woodcutter.
State
Impression
Work (Image)
Image Subject
Producer
BPI structure
(simplified)
24

25. ESTC
 An example of a search
for James Heath’s “Brief
Chronicle of the war in
the three kingdoms of
England, Scotland and
Ireland”
25

26. ESTC: one entry
26

27. FRBR:
Functional Requirements for Bibliographic
Records
 From: Tillet, Barbara (2004). FRBR? A Conceptual Model for the Bibliographic
Universe. Washington: Library of Congress Cataloguing Distribution Service.
Online at http://www.loc.gov/cds/downloads/FRBR.PDF.
27

28. Early modern books
and BPI1700
 FRBR (Functional Requirements
for Bibliographic Records)
provides a basic model for a text-
oriented view of the books.
 ESTC provides a structure at
roughly the FRBR Manifestation
level (as an ESTC Item – defined
as a combination of Short Title and
Imprint), and FRBR Item (as Copy)
level.
Title
(FRBR: Expression/
Work?)
Edition/Printing
(FRBR: Manifestation)
Instance
(FRBR: Item)
Author
Printer/
Publisher
ESTC?
Book
Subject
Holder 28

29. Image reuse in books
 "The cost of illustration was a significant concern for publishers and printers
considering an illustrated edition, and wood was less expensive than metal.
In addition, woodcut blocks could produce a great number of impressions
before showing wear, and thus could be reused with no addition
investment in capital on the part of the printer or publisher". (Knapp
2003, p 55)
 "As the publisher or printer, not the designer or woodcutter, retained the
blocks after they were used in an edition, the life of the blocks or plates was
seen as an important factor in making the investment. Original blocks were
most often commissioned with the idea that they could be reused, if not
in subsequent edition of the same book, then in another book with related
subject matter. Once the reasonable number of woodcut series were in a
printer's possession, the decision to illustrate any text is likely to have had
as much to do with the stock of woodblocks as with the suitability of the
text for illustration. To commission specific illustrations for a unique text,
especially one for which no established visual program existed, was fairly
rare.“ (Knapp 2003 pp. 55-56)
29

30. Title
(FRBR: Expression/
Work?)
Edition/Printing
(FRBR: Manifestation)
Instance
(FRBR: Item)
Author
ESTC?
Book
Subject
Holder
State
Impression
Work (Image)
Image Subject
Producer
BPI structure
(simplified)
Printer/
Publisher
30

31. Title
(FRBR: Expression/
Work?)
Edition/Impression
(FRBR: Manifestation)
Instance
(FRBR: Item)
Author
ESTC?
Book
Subject
Holder
State
Impression
Work (Image)
Image Subject
Producer
BPI structure
(simplified)
Printer/
Publisher
Set:
impression
31

32. Extra-illustration/Grangerizing
 From Folger Shakespeare
Library’s online exhibit
“Extending the Book: The
Art of Extra-Illustration”
32

33. Title
(FRBR: Expression/
Work?)
Edition/Impression
(FRBR: Manifestation)
Instance
(FRBR: Item)
Author
ESTC?
Book
Subject
Holder
State
Impression
Work (Image)
Image Subject
Producer
BPI structure
(simplified)
Printer/
Publisher
Set:
impression
Set:
item 33

34. Conclusions
 First, book illustrations have been somewhat neglected in the study
of early modern books, but their particular relationship between text
and illustration can be clearly seen to have a rather complex effect on
our understanding of the reader's experience of these objects.
 Second, that it seems best to view book prints and the book text as
two distinct cultural objects with different practices and technology
 Thus, it is best to produce a bibliographic model that accommodates
these two distinct, but intertwined, objects. Our two FRBR stacks
with a "set" link provides a good model.
 Finally, using the set to connect particular book items and prints
allows us to correctly capture the variability between copies. This, in
turn, continues to develop one of the current focuses on books as
individual physical objects.
34

35. Images, text, and the rise of
digital technology
 "... it is no coincidence that the rise of interest in the history of
the book has coincided with late twentieth-century
developments in information technologies, described by Roget
Chartier as central to "the profound transformation that is
currently altering all modes of communication and reception of
the written word.
 But at the opening of a new millennium, it appears that an
emergent emphasis on the visual may soon displace the
former hegemony of verbal, print based, narrative forms in the
realm of cultural production, creating the possibility of non-
narrative, non-linguistic interactions with and representations
of the past.“ (Knapp 2003, p 8)
35

36. References
 BPI1700, British Printed Images before 1700. Online at
http://www.bpi1700.org.uk
 ESTC. English Short Title Catalogue. Online at http://estc.bl.uk.
 Folger Shakespeare Library (2010). Extending the Book: The Art of Extra-
Illustration. An exhibition January 28-May 25, 2010. Online version available
at http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=3346
 Knapp, James A. (2003). Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England: the
representation of History in Printed Books. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
 Moriarty, Kate Simpson (2004). Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials
(Books) and Its Predecessors: A History of Rare Book Cataloging Practice in
the United States. A Master’s paper for the M.S. in L.S. degree. November,
2004. 100 pages. Advisor: Jerry D. Saye.
 Tillet, Barbara (2004). FRBR? A Conceptual Model for the Bibliographic
Universe. Washington: Library of Congress Cataloguing Distribution Service.
Online at http://www.loc.gov/cds/downloads/FRBR.PDF