Contemporary Context
1903 – “Extra Illustrating,” or “Grangerising”
Context
Long after The Woman in White first appeared in print, grangerization and extra-illustration continued to be a celebrated practice. This instructional overview of extra-illustration and grangerization appeared in a 1903 London publication titled Home Arts and Crafts. The text gives a glimpse into some of the strategies that creators used to prepare printed media for repurposing, something that allowed extra-illustrators and scrapbookers to take matter that “otherwise would probably be thrown away” and make it their own.
“EXTRA ILLUSTRATING,” OR “GRANGERISING.”
“Extra illustrating,” as the term is used by collectors, means gathering portraits of the persons and views of the places mentioned in any given book, and having the book handsomely rebound, with each portrait and view placed opposite the page where it is mentioned. Drawings, water-colours, prints or photographs, autographs—indeed, all things of the kind that pertain to any person or incident mentioned in the book—have a claim to a place in it. The pastime is fascinating and pleasurable, for pleasure consists not so much in the acquisition of a desired object as in the pursuit of it, and book illustrating is a constant pursuit of coveted prints. It is, moreover, instructive, because the collector makes himself acquainted with the history of the persons mentioned in the book he is illustrating, which leads him to read other books, and in time he becomes thoroughly conversant with the history of the period of which his book treats. The hobby is closely allied to “ bibliomania,” and is generally indulged in by persons who have fine libraries.
As there are books and books, so are there illustrators and illustrators. One man will be satisfied with the work of a professional illustrator, to whom he will send a volume to be thus interleaved; another will gather his illustrations from many sources and select such as his own taste decrees fit; another will embellish the work with numerous fancy head and tail pieces appropriate to the subject; and yet another—and happiest is he—who, with ready pen, pencil, and brush, can add a copy of some portrait yet unengraved or the sketch of a locality still unlimned. How it makes a brother-collector’s mouth water and his fingers itch to see such within the leaves of another’s book, which he, too, is illustrating!
One illustrator will be satisfied to have his print, autograph, or letter in any state, merely because he has it on the list, and once obtained that particular item can be stricken off; another may buy in succession a dozen impressions of one desired print, and yet keep on the look-out until the volume is finally bound for a still better impression of it.
In London in 1769 appeared the first edition, 2 vols., 4to, of a book which was the immediate forerunner of all books illustrated by interleaving. Its title, sufficiently comprehensive, was
“Biographical History of England fro