Re: Illustrations - AR v Helene Carter


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Posted by Ed Kiser on August 02, 2006 at 15:00:11 from 152.163.101.7 user Kisered.

In Reply to: Re: Illustrations - AR v Clifford Webb posted by Joe Windsor on July 30, 2006 at 19:04:31:

As for the drawing of faces, we do have a few. P158 SD, Chapter "Settling In" is the picture titled "By Supper-Time The Explorers Were Resting From Their Labours" where 3 of the 4 characters definitely show their faces as they relax by the recently constructed pool at the foot of the waterfall at the head of their valley. These faces consist of nothing but 3 or 4 dots, but are faces.

There are quite a few drawings showing side views of faces, or tiny dots for the features but are so far away with the faces so tiny it hardly counts for much.

There is a good "face" P169 SD "Into The Shallows Roger Splashed" showing Roger's facial features with much more detail. Titty's face is some distance away, and is nothing more than 4 dots. It's a good view of Roger however.

P305 SD is a good one of Titty's face as she is looking at Roger's twisted ankle.

The above SD references are in a volume published by J.B.Lippincott, 3rd impression, copyright 1933, made in the USA. There is no reference in the book itself as to who the artist is, but on the fly of the cover, the name is given as Helene Carter. So, these are not Ransome's art work at all.

This book shows a lot of small drawings at the start and end of chapters that are good geographical views that show the view from some height, taking in several features in the landscape, helping greatly to show the positional relationships of the various features of geography. These are great for helping form in the mind those images of where things are. After all, the images that really count are the ones that somehow got burned into my own mind.

But when one tries to remember a drawing showing a face, the one that is primary in my mind is one where the face is definitely BLANKED out, and that is of Nancy, with her swollen face with the mumps in WH, as she is looking out of her window to the others in the garden around the sundial, where her face is deliberately just a white circle with the words suggesting that it would not be fair to Nancy to show her in her awful swollen state.

In the Godine publication of SD, published 1961, p192, "The Knickerbockerbreaker", showing Roger sliding down the rock slope, his face is shown, but seems a bit distorted. It is not a good showing of a face. Titty's face at the top of the slope as she looks down at Roger is a much better face. And at P198, we get a good look at Mary's face as she is darning Roger's torn knickerbockers.

When comparing these two editions of SD, we find quite a different set of pictures, with each book showing scenes or views that are not found in the other edition. I find that the artwork in the Lippencott edition to be the more pleasing, with more detail shown.

Perhaps the images shown in the older book by Lippencott are the more "real" in my mind as they were the first impressions I got of those places and people, and so became the "reality" burned into my mind, whereas the pictures of later editions are but imitations and perhaps even invalid depictions as they conflict with that picture already in my mind which have become the true standard.

I therefore see the Ransome World through the eyes of Helene Carter, as she saw it, and showed it to me.

Ed Kiser, Kentucky



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