Robinson Crusoe Illustrations: From Frontispieces to Icons

The novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is debatably-known as one of the first English novels. From the first publication, the novel was published nine times in 1719 and hasn’t gone out of print since (Defoe Society). The popularity of the novel created multiple editions, and illustrations that evolving with ‘the book’. From the 18th century hard, leather bound books with frontispiece illustrations; to the invention of the 1920’s decorated cloth bindings; to the dust cover jackets and the paperback book with cover illustrations; to modern e-readers, the18th century Robinson Crusoe illustrations transformed through art style and format with modern editions of the book. The introduction of e-readers permanently transformed the interaction of the novel and illustrations and adapted the role of the illustrated book cover to the modern texts, and subsequently eradicated the influence of the illustrated book cover.

The role of the illustration in a novel during the 18th-century revolved around iconographical moments represented in the novel, but through time the different ways in which designers and illustrators depicted scenes “visually reflect changes in reading practices” (Jung 24, 26). The Journal for Illustration Studies argues that illustrations are reflective in two different ways. An illustration is first reflective when “an illustration is seen to reflect or mirror the words that it accompanies, and is interpreted, and judged, in these terms” (Thomas “The Database of Mid-Victorian Wood-Engraved Illustration”). Therefore, a successful illustration will represent the text correspondent to the illustration. The second way illustrations are reflective is that the illustrator should have a “clear understanding of his author” (Thomas). However, it is arguable that an illustration will inevitably include aspects that aren’t directly dictated by the words of the novel, but a transposition from different mediums to create a hyper-text. The illustration is more reflective of the illustrator’s interpretation of the text allowing the illustrator to fill gaps, and even create meaning (Thomas).

During the 18th Century, leather bound books were common, and frontispiece decoration would have been normal. In the first publication of Robinson Crusoe the single illustration appears on the frontispiece of the novel representing the supposed author of the piece. The illustration depicting Robinson Crusoe in the foreground, and the imagery in the background offers little insight into the interpretation of the novel as literature. However, when the illustration juxtaposes the didactic voice of Daniel Defoe’s preface in The Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelic World, the image appears to represent Robinson Crusoe as the author— essentially the illustration is a biographical representation (Defoe 400). By incorporating an image of the supposed author, Defoe and his publishers create a meta-text that doesn’t specifically reference a particular moment in the text, but it creates an additional interpretation for the original readers of the novel that the authorship of the text was real, with real events.

Later publications incorporate illustrations that involve more

iconographic moments in the text as well as illustrate more than just the frontispieces. For example, in the 1790 reproduction of Robinson Crusoe, Thomas Stothard designed seven different illustrations that reflected poignant moments in the text. The main authority of the illustrations of Robinson Crusoe, David Blewett, “called ‘a visual summary of main lines of the lines of the story’ thus creating ‘an instance of eighteenth-century narrative painting” (Sill “Historical Perspectives on the First Castaway” qtd. in text). Strothard’s designs have been claimed to be “an idealistic and romantic standard” (Sill). As narrative illustrations, the images tell a story, and they don’t simply reflect the text at hand. Stothard depicts Crusoe with an air of confidence that allow the readers to interpret the text slightly different than the first edition frontispiece that was printed in 1719. One of his

illustrations depicts Crusoe’s interaction with Friday’s footprint on the sand. The image incorporates Crusoe’s expression of wonder at the foot print that counter-reacts with the textual reaction to the foot print on the beach. Without the illustration, the reader might see Crusoe’s panic in the text as reflective of his unstable state of mind; however, the illustration’s calm and romanticized imagery of the beach allow the reader to view the moment with less severity. Through Strothard’s interpretation of Crusoe in this iconic moment shifts the interpretation of the seven specific moment’s text for readers.

The artists of the 19th century carried the book through the industrialization of the book, where binders turned to mechanization to meet consumer’s demands. Cloth bindings was the norm at




the end of the century, and cover designs started to reflect the content of the book. The artist that followed Strothard transformed the illustrations to represent Robinson Crusoe as a parable in a biblical interpretation. In the 20th century decorated cloth bindings gave way to the printed dust jacket, and the paperback book started to take a part of the market place. Shortly after the parable interpretations of Robinson Crusoe, the romantic realism illustrations created by N.C. Wyeth re-interpreted the 1920’s publication of the novel by focusing on the nature as a force in the text.

Wyeth’s illustrations used vivid colors, and abstract shapes to depict landscape. The change from Crusoe being the focal point in the illustrations to the landscape being the focus reflects the illustrator’s interpretation of the text. The preface of the novel states that “Wyeth described his interests in celebrating both nature and” a single man’s acquisition over destiny (Sill “Historical Perspectives on the First Castaway”). By holding both landscape and man hand in hand, Wyeth shifted the interpretation of the novel to reflect current views of illustrations and art. The soft colors of the sky fading into the dark colors of the sea to the image of Crusoe looking off into the distance influences the novel’s description and readers understanding of the landscape. The image created is a romanticized depiction of Crusoe’s adventure. Wyeth’s illustrations have continued to be reproduced in the 21st century, but the iconic illustration that was on the cover is the one reprinted on many other publishers without the other illustrations. This adaptation of the illustration changes the interpretation of the novel because only the cover illustration influences the iconic moments that Wyeth created don’t influence the

Along with Wyeth’s illustration of Robinson Crusoe, Barnes’ and Noble’s publication of the novel depicts a single image of Friday’s footprint in the sand. Friday’s footprint has been used before as an illustration of the text; however, the shift of the 21st century to the electronic books allowed Robinson Crusoe’s front cover illustration to become an icon. Since the closing of Borders Books and Music, the book industry began acknowledging something that readers already knew: book purchases are online, either in physical form or for e-reader consumption. Online the illustration of the book is about an inch tall and a half inch wide. The reader clicks on the small illustration to get to the content of the piece before purchasing the novel. On an e-reader like the Kindle the illustration remains about 200 pixels in size, and interacts with the reader completely differently than the physical book. The 21st century has allowed the cover illustration of Robinson Crusoe to become a simpler image of just the foot print. The modern interpretation of that scene “creates an image of a sign of loneliness of the individual psyche in a hostile environment for which older centuries of providentialism so not offer consultation” (Lansverk lecture). The simple foot-print meets the modern understanding of the novel, but it also meets the modern construction of the book—it’s easier to see a foot in icon form than previous illustrations of the novel.

The illustration has been removed from the readers experience with the text on the e-reader interface. After the novel is purchased on an e-reader, the front illustration only is seen if the book is reopened. The reader doesn’t re-experience the front cover illustration like they would have in the previous centuries. The front illustration appears to interact with the reader in a similar, but smaller way as the Robinson Crusoe frontispiece did. With physical book in hand, the reader sees the cover illustration, and every time Crusoe was set down the reader is confronted by the illustration again. This isn’t true about the single frontispiece illustration, or the illustrations that occurred throughout the text, but each image was a part of the readers’ meaning making process. By downsizing the illustration to 200 pixels, and making it difficult to access, the illustrations impact has been downsized to near irrelevance in an e-reader format. The illustration has been separated from the text, and no longer creates a hyper-text that impact the readers understanding of the novel.

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