Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights (review)

Visions of the Jinn is a beautiful book with a price tag of $225, perhaps more appropriate for the coffee table than the library shelf. It contains 163 illustrations within its 240 pages. However, Irwin’s goal is much larger than just pleasing the eye. Recognizing that the impressions of current readers are as much the result of the pictures as of the stories themselves, he identifies his audience as readers of the Arabian Nights who are curious about the illustrations as commentary on the text (10). Along with a brief summary of the history of the various texts and manuscripts, he examines and analyzes the evolution of the images that accompany and complement the stories.

Versions of the Arabian Nights have been in steady publication since Antoine Galland first introduced them to the West at the end of the seventeenth century. Consequently, the books provide an excellent case study for the introduction, production, and incorporation of illustration into printed texts. Irwin points out that the earliest editions of the Arabian Nights were intended for adult audiences and did not include pictures. Initially, the only illustrations were frontispieces, and most of those depicted a scene from the framing story in which the king marries a virgin, only to have her executed the next morning, until Shahrazad volunteers to marry him and then preserves her life by telling stories each night. These pictures made no effort to reflect the setting of the stories. Illustrators drew from material with which they were familiar, chiefly classical or biblical images, as Irwin’s choices demonstrate. In the second half of the eighteenth century, editions of Arabian Nights began to include more pictures depicting scenes from various stories. Editions became more comprehensive and scholarly, with extensive geographic and ethnographic information about the Middle East. As a result, the range of images and details depicted by illustrators expanded, encompassing even the margins, chapter endings, decorative borders, and notes.

As Irwin proceeds through his chronology of illustrated Arabian Nights, his text addresses technological developments, showing ties between important illustrators and engravers and how they contributed to book and publication history. He traces the way in which woodcut illustrations influenced copperplate engraving, explaining the professional pedigrees of the prominent illustrators and engravers as well as how their techniques affected the resulting illustrations. The nineteenth-century developments of chromolithography and photolithography allowed artists more choices and finer distinctions as well as greater use of color, as the included reproductions show. Irwin also details how the rise of the Japonesque, Pre-Raphaelite, and Art Deco movements in the art world influenced the illustrators of the Arabian Nights.

The exotic settings and magical storylines called for illustrations to help stir readers’ imaginations, inspiring multiple images of the jinns (or genies) that populate the tales. As editors and illustrators gained more knowledge about the East, they came to see an educational role for their pictures in the Arabian Nights. Orientalist scholars and editors like Lane and Burton guided illustrators in providing background information that would enhance and explain the text. Later, as printing technology improved, publishers paid less attention to the text and concentrated on the illustrations, frequently gathering the work of various well-known illustrators in a single book. Individual artists also created children’s gift books with primary emphasis on the illustrations.

Although much of Visions of the Jinn is devoted to reproductions of the images, the accompanying text, captions, and notes are succinct and richly informative. The index and bibliographic materials demonstrate the sound scholarly approach that Irwin’s background would indicate. In the preface the Arcadian Library is identified as the source for most (although not all) of the books included in the study. In explaining his choices, Irwin says that his book is not intended to be comprehensive, because many editions “contain incompetent or kitsch illustrations” (6). His selections are based on artistic merit or other significance. No one would argue with the...