| The
Illustrating
Scott Project was funded by a British Academy
small research grant, and serves to locate and catalogue
the illustrations to the Waverley Novels that appeared
in print form in Britain from the publication of Scott's
first novel, Waverley. The principal investigator
was Peter Garside, and the research
associate was Ruth McAdams.
Virtually
from the time of their first publication, Walter Scott's
novels were popular subjects for pictorial illustration
in British print publications. The novels themselves
were accompanied by illustrations whose style evolved
over the course of the nineteenth century to reflect
changes in the technologies and practices of book illustration.
In addition, there were numerous separate publications
of illustrations to the Waverley Novels, and single
illustrations of scenes from the novels appeared in
periodicals and literary annuals. These images had a
profound effect on the dissemination of Scott's novels
and in the cultivation of Scott's literary image.
The project
has created a database of these illustrations that records
the containing publication, artist, engraver, and other
relevant information, as well as a scan of the image
in some cases.
The project
makes special use of the Corson
Collection at the University of Edinburgh Library,
and advice from the collection curator Paul Barnaby
was essential to the project's development. The result
of the librarian James C. Corson's life-long obsession
with all things Scott-related, the Corson Collection
is a vast repository of a variety of materials, including
printed books, with particular strengths in nineteenth-century
popular editions of the novels.
A recent increase
in the critical interest in Scott as well as in the
interdisciplinary field of book illustrationmakes the
database a useful tool for Scott scholars and art historians,
as well as those interested in material culture and
the construction of literary reputation in the nineteenth
century.
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