Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe: Reading Allart and Vis’ 1791 Dutch Edition Russell Palmer Eighteenth-century book illustrations are widely seen as interpretative devices that help readers understand particular passages of a text. This article considers illustrations as comprising an element of the text capable of offering criticism on the typographically realized text, thereby altering the author’s original narrative or enticing readers towards interpretations that differ from those presented by the typographical text alone. In order to demonstrate the potential for illustrations to develop a visual commentary, this article works through the visual narratives proffered by the illustrations included in a 1791 Dutch edition of Robinson Crusoe (Amsterdam: Allart and Vis). Robinson Crusoe was a profusely illustrated and widely read novel during the eighteenth century, and mediations of the work frequently crossed European borders. Allart and Vis’ edition departs in their choice of illustrated subjects from those of many of their predecessors and contemporaries, offering a new graphic interpretation that provides visual criticism of Defoe’s text. Book illustrations make up one central component of the eighteenth-century illustrated edition. They comprise the material manifestation of a series of decisions relating to the subject to be depicted, which illustrator(s) to commission, the techniques of (re)production, down to the paper used for printing. The decisions entail the involvement of multiple agents - booksellers, artists, engravers, printers and (sometimes) authors - and result in something that not only enhances the appeal of a volume, but may also increase its monetary value and marketability. Illustrated editions of literary works contain normally a handful of illustrations, compared to perhaps hundreds of pages of printed words. Nonetheless, images convey powerful messages that do not always cohere with those engendered by the AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 46 (2021) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.2357/ AAA-2021-0002 Russell Palmer 16 typographical text. There is an assumption inherent in the very term “illustration” that the image interprets the typographical text. While this may be true in many, or even most, instances, images included in eighteenthcentury editions sometimes also had the ability to encourage specific readings of a text and particular reading practices, producing narratives of their own (Jung 2020: 171). These images’ agency was fed by their material realization, their placing and sequencing within the codex. Their materiality made them inseparable from the book into which they were bound and the text of which they were constituent parts. In order to understand a “text” in its fullest possible sense, we must consider all elements of its material iterations. In this respect, I wish to extend Jerome McGann’s textual condition, a process in which “the various lines of agency often become obscured” (1991: 97), to include the agency of the objects produced: books and their illustrations. 1 “The primary requirement of book illustration”, according to Robert Folkenflik, “is to illustrate the text” (2002: 515), but which text? The text itself is “open, unstable, [and] intermediate” (McKenzie 1999: 60), and not bound to any one material iteration, yet it is through books and their constituent parts that texts and their illustrations are most frequently encountered. In this article, I examine the engravings of a Dutch edition of Robinson Crusoe published in 1791 in order to investigate how these illustrations come to take an obtrusive material form with which the reader cannot avoid engaging. Furthermore, I show in my study how, through their obtrusiveness, they direct a reader’s interpretation and offer commentary on the linguistic text. Book illustrations are usually understood as visual (as opposed to textual or metatextual) media and when bound sequentially into a book, they may create a “visual narrative” of their own, independently from the typographical text, which need not be read. However, it is through their materiality that they exert their presence and act. William Mitchell argues that “all media are mixed media” and in fact “there are no ‘visual media’” (2005: 261): captioned book illustrations are not exclusively visual and the images bear traces of mechanical reproduction, such as, in the case of copperand steel-engravings, indented impressions in the paper. Moreover, a book illustration exists not in isolation, but is bound into a book, which itself must be held or rested on a surface in order to be read; the reader must engage with the physicality of the text (the book) as she or he turns the pages, a process in which each page is revealed and comes into being anew. Each viewing is unique, though the assemblage of printed signs, animal skin, cord, paste, and paper, loses its affective potency as it retreats into the background of the reader’s perception, serving as a vessel or “tool” 1 My intention is not to collapse all forms of human and nonhuman agency into one or deny the distinctiveness of human agency (Kipins 2015: 50), but rather to highlight the ways in which objects enable and encourage certain human actions and to acknowledge the active role of things in the creation of people (Gosden 2005: 194). Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 17 through which one or two facets - the mechanically printed words and images - come into stark view. However, in order to become generative, to produce a narrative of their own, illustrations must do more than be present, they must matter. They must in some way shape readers’ engagement with the linguistic text; their ability to do so is inherent in their “literariness”, their ability to function “as a literary element of the text” (Barchas 2003: 34). Some images have no coherent or inherent connection with what the linguistic text describes, narrates, or what it induces the reader to contemplate or imagine, and therefore possess no literariness. Such images fail to materialize their textinterpretive agency and merely provide a pictorial interlude or backdrop for that conveyed linguistically. In contrast, those which can engage a reader influence the order in which plot lines are construed, how characters are envisaged, and how pages are turned. A woodcut of an unidentifiable ship on an equally unidentifiable ocean, not connected to any particular instance within the adventures of Robinson Crusoe has no literariness; it cannot contrive easily with other images to produce a visual narrative. It may retain a level of attraction to the viewer and even help identify the work as belonging to a particular genre, for example maritime adventures, but it ceases to have any generative qualities with respect to promoting particular readings of or offering criticism on the text of which it has become part. The bibliographical encodings of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe have received attention from numerous scholars, from the authorial alterations made during the author’s lifetime to posthumous editions (Barchas 2003: 41). In 1995, David Blewett dedicated an entire book to the illustrations of the work as rendered in English and French editions, employing an approach which, as Sandro Jung (2020) has much more recently demonstrated, disregards the transcultural mobility and dynamism omnipresent in eighteenth-century European print culture. The success of Robinson Crusoe both in Defoe’s native England and in mainland Europe spawned many illustrated editions, abridgements, and subsequent robinsonades, and it is clear that translations of the novel found a range of enthusiastic audiences across eighteenth-century Europe. Two translations of Robinson Crusoe appeared in Dutch over the course of the eighteenth century and both were illustrated (Table 1). The Jansoons van Waesberge, Amsterdam booksellers, published the first translation only a year after the publication of the original in London, issuing it as the first part of the The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures under the title of Het Leven en wonderbaare Gevallen van Robinson Crusoe in 1720 (Staverman 1907: 34). In the same year, the Jansoons published the second part, giving it a separate title page but issuing it together with the first part in a single octavo volume that also contained twelve full-page copper-engraved plates. A year later the same booksellers published a translation of The Farther Adventures in a second volume, containing eight full-page plates and a Russell Palmer 18 fold-out map. In 1722, the Jansoons published The Serious Reflections in a third volume, including a further seven full-page plates, plus a half-page engraving of Crusoe’s island, bringing the total number of illustrations for the edition to twenty-eight, not including the foldout map. All are unsigned. The Jansoons reissued their edition in 1735-36 and in 1752 it was reprinted by another Amsterdam bookseller, Jan Morterre. Over seventy years after the initial appearance of Robinson Crusoe in Dutch, Johannes Allart, Amsterdam, and Dirk Vis, Rotterdam, issued a new edition in 1791, entitled Levensgeschiedenis en lotgevallen van Robinson Crusoe. Also in three octavo volumes, their edition featured only The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures and The Farther Adventures. A decade earlier, Pieter Meijer had insisted that the Robinson Crusoe cycle should begin and end with The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures; that The Farther Adventures was added by booksellers merely to make more money and The Serious Reflections ought to be totally omitted (Meijer 1781: 69). We can never know the motivations behind Allart and Vis’s choices, but published in an influential periodical, these comments may reflect differing levels of appreciation for Defoe’s works found in the Dutch-speaking world. Issuing only the first two novels was also in line with practices abroad, and the 1790s in particular witnessed an increase in this trend in English-language Robinson Crusoe publications (Free 2006: 91-92). However, such editions commonly conformed to the more usual practice of allotting separate volumes to each novel or combining them in one; either way, the production structures of specific editions did not generally divide Defoe’s works across volumes in the way Allart and Vis’ edition did. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures occupies the entire of the first volume and 256 pages of the second, The Farther Adventures completing the second and third volumes. The title page to the first volume boasts that the publishers are presenting a new improved edition (“Nieuwe verbeterde uitgave”). Advertisements refer to the edition as newly translated from English and that may well be the case, due to a number of “corrections” made when compared to the Jansoons’ text (Buisman 1960: 82). Differences in vocabulary and grammar are present, too. For example, when describing himself, Crusoe terms his umbrella a “kiperzol” in the Janssons’ edition (1720: 379) and a “parasol” (311) in 1791. Past tense forms of verbs are frequently amended to present tense forms; and orthographic conventions adopt the “ij” in favour of the “y” vowel. Perhaps in order to convince prospective purchasers that their text is indeed a new translation, Allart and Vis make a detailed printed account of the work (“een uitvoerig bericht”) freely available to booksellers and their customers all over the Netherlands (Groningen Courant 1791: 1). Unlike the Jansoons and Morterre, Allart and Vis do not include a preface from the translator (or themselves) in their edition. Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 19 Jansoons, 1721 Allart & Vis, 1791 Volume 1 (Deel 1, Stuk 1) Volume 1 Untitled frontispiece Untitled frontispiece “Crusoe gaat met zyn Makker, van Hull Scheep” “Crusoe ontslaat zich van de Moor, en vlugt” “Crusoe gestrand zijnde, raakt gelukkig aan land” “Crusoe begin een Logement te vervaerdigen” “Crusoe, verschrikt door een aardbeeving, klimt over zijn’wal” “Vervaarelyke Droom van R: Crusoe” “Crusoe maakt potten tot zyn provisie” “Crusoe maakt potten” “Crusoe maakt een Kanoe” “Crusoe bereydt zich Kleederen” “Crusoes klugtige manier van speysen” “De manier van Spijzen en huishouding van Crusoe” Volume 1 (Deel 1, Stuk 2) “Crusoe ontdekt de plaats der Canibaalse maaltyden” “Crusoe ontdekte met verschrikking de Plaats der Canibaalsche maaltijden” Volume 2 “Een Cannibaal onderwerpt zich aan Crusoe” “Een Cannibaal onderwerpt zich aan Crusoe” “Crusoe verlost een Spanjerd uyt de handen der Cannibaalen” “Crusoe verlost een Spaniaard uit de handen der Cannibaalen” Crusoe werd geproviandeerd en gekleedt” “Crusoe, van zijn Eiland vertrekkende, stelt de gevangen in vrijheid, en wijst hen hunnen nieuwen Capitein, die aan de nok van de rae hangt” “Vermaaklijk voorval van Crusoe’s knecht, Vrijdag, met een’beer” Table 1. Caption subject descriptions of the illustrations in Jansoons (1720) and Allart & Vis’ (1791) editions of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Russell Palmer 20 The eighteen plates are distributed unevenly across the volumes, with the first containing six (including the frontispiece), the second seven, and the third five. Ten of the plates accompany The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, leaving eight to illustrate The Farther Adventures. The title page describes them only as “new plates” (“nieuwe plaaten”), and advertisements claim they are “completely newly invented plates, by J. Buis” (“met geheel nieuw geinventeerde platen, door J. Buis”) (Groningen Courant 1791: 1). The first claim appears to be accurate. The subjects of some plates are seemingly depicted for the first time and while other episodes, such as Crusoe potting, appear in earlier Dutch and non-Dutch editions, the exact rendering in these instances differs from earlier representations. The second claim is harder to verify, as none of the engravings are signed. Jacobus Buis (1724-1801), or more commonly “Buys”, was an Amsterdam painter and engraver (Bryan 1886: 204). Leotine Buijnsters-Smets lists Allart and Vis’ plates as being his designs, engraved by Reinier Vinkeles (1984: 100). Vinkeles was a draughtsman and engraver, who himself designed over 1,500 book illustrations (Bryan 1889: 674). Together, Buys and Vinkeles defined the face of Dutch book illustration in the second half of the eighteenth century: Buys worked at least 61 times with Vinkeles and 48 times for Allart in the years before and after 1791 (Buijnsters-Smets 1984: 91, 99-106). Vinkeles had a copy of Robinson Crusoe in his own library, along with translations of Gulliver’s Travels, Don Quixote and an English edition of Pamela (Jung 2005: 128), and while it seems likely that Buys and Vinkeles were responsible for the 1791 Robinson Crusoe plates, Buijnsters- Smets does not divulge her evidence for attributing the engravings and I can find no corroborating evidence. Therefore, no firm attribution can be made. 2 By the time Allart and Vis published their edition, Robinson Crusoe had become familiar to the Dutch reading public not only through the Jansoons’ and Morterre’s editions, but also through illustrated French editions, especially those issued by bookseller Zacharie Chatelain and his partners, which included his sons (Table 2). François l’Honoré & Chatelain published the first in 1720 in large 12mo (De Boekzaal 3 1721, 58), reprinting it in 1722. Chatelain marketed his subsequent 1727 and 1743 reprints as the third and fourth “editions”, which he published on his own. In 1764, Z. Chatelain & fils issued a new edition, reprinting it in 1776 and issuing a newly typeset edition in 1777. Meanwhile, the l’Honoré & Chatelain edition received a further reprint in 1765. In addition to the editions issued by the Chatelains, the Aux dépens de la Compangnie issued an edition in 1765, C. J. Pancoucke published an edition in 1766, and E. van Harrevelt 2 I am grateful to Ton Broos, who supplied references and corresponded regarding the likelihood of Buys and Vinkeles working on the edition. 3 The full name of the Boekzaal is Maandelyke uittreksels, of Boekzael der geleerde waerelt. Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 21 of Amsterdam published an edition in 1770. Some years later and shortly before the publication of Allart and Vis’ edition, Charles Garnier chose The Life and Most Surprising Adventures, The Farther Adventures, and the Serious Reflections as the first three volumes in his 36-volume series, Voyages Imaginaires (1787-1789), “A Amsterdam; et se trouve à Paris” and also in French. Cailleau, Paris (1761, 1782) Chatelain, Amsterdam (1764, 1776, 1777) Garnier, Amsterdam (1787) Frontispiece: “Robinson allant à la Chasse; voyez la Pag. 217. 2: partie, la description de son habillement” Frontispiece: “Robinson allant a la chasse Voyez la page 217 2 e partie la description de son habillement” (“Robinson allant à la Chasse [1777]) Tome Premier Tome Premier Tome Premier “Robinson reçoit des remontrances de son Pere sur les dangers de s’embarquer” “Robinson reçoit des remontrances de son pere sur les dangers de s’embarquer” “Robinson remercie le Ciel de l’Avoir sauvé de grand peril qu’il vient de courir” “Robinson remercie le Ciel de l’Avoir sauvé du grand peril qu’il vient de courir” “Grand Dieu! comment est-il possible que je sois venu à terre” “Robinson trouve de la consolation dans les paroles qu’il vient de lire dans la Bible” “Robinson trouve de la consolation dans les paroles qu’il vient de lire de la Bible” Tome Second Tome Second Tome Second “Robinson sauve la vie à un sauvage qui par reconnaissance se fait son esclave” “Robinson sauve la vie a un sauvage qui par reconnaissance se fait son esclave” “Il prend un de mes pieds et le pose sure sa tète pour me faire comprendre sans doute qu’il me juroit fidelité” “Robinson sort de son Isle pour aller a Londres il emmene avec lui Vendredi et son perroquet” “Robinson sort de son Isle pour aller a Londres il emmene avec lui Vendredi et son perroquet” Russell Palmer 22 “Vendredi tire d’un grand danger le guide de Robinson” “Vendredi tire d’un grand danger le guide de Robinson” Table 2. Caption subject descriptions of the illustrations in French translations of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. The pricing of Allart and Vis’ offering marks it out as a relatively expensive edition of belles lettres. In their advertisements, Allart and Vis point out to their potential customers that, given the large number of new illustrations and map, their edition should be priced at f 12-0, but they were in fact selling it at the “cheap price” (“goedkope prys”) of f 7-15 (Oprechte Haerlemsche Courant 1791b: 2). 4 A much cheaper two-volume edition of the Saxische Robinson, of Crusoe de Twede, also illustrated, sold for only f 2- 4 (Oprechte Haerlemsche Courant 1791a: 1), which compares more favourably with the pricing of other well-known translated works, including Rousseau’s Julia of nieuwe Héloise for ƒ 3-0, Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison and Clarissa selling for f 3-60 per volume, and Goethe’s Werther for f 3-0 (Broos 1981-1982: 215). Allart and Vis’s Robinson Crusoe appears not to have sold out immediately. In 1804, Willem van Vliet of Amsterdam offers the complete edition for only f 4-10 (Boekzaal 1804: 65), a year later it sells for f 4-50 (van Veen 1980: 7n7), and twenty years after its publication, an advertisement in the Boekzaal (1811: 517) offers it again for f 4- 10, noting that very few copies are left (“Nog zeer weinige Exemplaren”). Allart and Vis may have misjudged the market in producing an expensive edition of Robinson Crusoe at a time when the tale was migrating from the adult market towards the children’s. In what follows I focus on the plates included with the The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, or the first one and a half volumes of Allart and Vis’ edition. Examining each plate in its turn, I offer comparisons with earlier renderings of the same textual moments, especially those which accompanied earlier editions of Robinson Crusoe in Dutch. The lack of previous systematic scholarship on illustrations produced for late eighteenthcentury editions of Robinson Crusoe necessitates a certain amount of searching for precedents in order to understand whether or not iconographic precedents exist and if so, how the plates in Allart and Vis’ edition differ from what went before. As Sandro Jung has recently demonstrated for early editions of Robinson Crusoe, the enthusiasm with which Defoe’s tale was taken up in Continental Europe demands that one must look transnationally (2020), and I do not therefore limit myself to discussing Dutch lan- 4 A marketing device used a year earlier by John Stockdale in advertisements of his 1790 London edition, illustrated by Thomas Stothard (see Jung 2020: 176). Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 23 guage editions or those printed in Amsterdam. However, my primary purpose is to demonstrate the ways in which the images bound into the 1791 Dutch edition offer criticism of the linguistic text by creating a narrative that deviates from Defoe’s text or the Dutch translation of it. In order to understand how agency and narrative are materialized in the edition, it is essential to consider the illustrative plates not only individually, but also as parts of sequential sets that comprise their own visual texts. Together the plates and the material make-up of the volumes offer multiple visually-led readings. They encouraged particular reading practices over others. Due to space constraints, I limit myself to considering volume one independently before addressing The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures as a whole. The analysis is based on the inspection of three copies of the edition, held by the British Library, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in the Hague, and the University of Michigan Library, in each of which the illustrations occur in the same sequence and bound into the volumes at the same points. Russell Palmer 24 Figure 1. Frontispiece, Levensgeschiedenis en lotgevallen van Robinson Crusoe (Amsterdam, 1791). Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (call mark: General collection Defoe 52 P791). Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 25 The first image to greet the reader, assuming a beginning-to-end reading, is the frontispiece of Crusoe (Figure 1), which shares many features with the Bernard Picart-inspired e arlier Dutch frontispiece (see Jung 2020: 175). It lacks the “treacherous water” and foundering ship, which in the early English and French portraits David Blewett interprets as adding a timeless, synoptic element to the image (1995: 27). Rather, it reflects Crusoe’s description of himself found on page 310 (1791). Crusoe stands in his goat-skins and breeches. An axe, a saw, and a pouch hang on his belt and a wicker basket on his back. The right hand is holding a parasol, while his left supports the butt of his fowling piece resting over his left shoulder. In the background, his shelter and its palisade wall are both clearly visible, as is the stone tablet lying on the ground and announcing the novel’s title. Significant deviations from the frontispieces used by the Jansoons and Morterre appear in Crusoe’s demeanour and the background, which together create an altogether different image of the novel’s protagonist. Although the posture of the body is broadly the same in both frontispieces, there are marked differences. An erect deportment and confident facial expression replace the tilted head and grimace of the earlier depiction. Rough sandals that expose his toes and upper feet are substituted for a full covering, giving an appearance not dissimilar to that of stockings and shoes, despite his admission that he had neither (1791: 310). The sky and a sandy foreground flood the image with light, which reflects off Crusoe’s furs and emphasizes the shade afforded by his parasol. Despite concluding that onlookers will think he looks like a barbarian 5 , the narrator Crusoe, as rendered in the 1791 frontispiece, appears as a rather elegant figure in a comparatively orderly environment. The bare-footed savage is transformed into a much nobler creature than the one presented in previous Dutch-language editions. 5 “doch alles was zo misselijk gefatsoeneerd, dat ik eene zeer barbaarsche vertooning maakte” (1791: 310). Russell Palmer 26 Figure 2. “Crusoe gestrand zijnde, raakt gelukkig aan land“, Levensgeschiedenis en lotgevallen van Robinson Crusoe (Amster-dam, 1791). Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (call mark: General collection Defoe 52 P791). Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 27 The caption to plate 1 reads “Crusoe gestrand zijnde, raakt gelukkig aan land. / Pag.108” (“Crusoe is stranded, happily touching land”). 6 Notably, it is the only plate numbered with a specific page number, although the indicated page does not correspond with where the binder has bound the plate; it is sandwiched between two passages that describe Crusoe gesticulating heavenwards (Figure 2). On the page preceding, Crusoe describes raising his hands towards Heaven and thanking God for sparing his life: “Ik was nu gestrand, en gelukkig aan Land geraakt, wanneer ik mijn handen tot den Hemmel hief, en God dankte, dat hij mijn leven in dit geval had gelieven te bewaren, ’t welk ik wenige oogenblikken te vooren met geen reden had durven hopen” (“I was now stranded and lucky to reach land, when I raised up my hands to Heaven and thanked God that He had saved my life at a time, where only moments before I had not dared to hope”) (1791: 88). On the page following, the text reads “Vervolgends ging ik langs strand wandelen, hief mijne handen op, en begon de wonderbaare manier van mijne verlossing te overdenken, maakende duizend gebaarden, en bewegingen, die ik niet beschrijven kan” (Subsequently, I walked along the beach, raising my hands up, and began to contemplate the wonderful manner of my redemption, making a thousand gestures and movements that I cannot describe”) (1791: 89). The movement engendered in the second passage by his walking along the beach with upraised hands jars with the kneeling position portrayed in the image. Pictured kneeling on one leg and raising his arms up in supplication, Crusoe gazes not directly upwards, as befitting a thankful supplicant. His torso, stance and palms all face the viewer, yet his slightly up-turned head faces away. With long, bedraggled hair flanking his facial expression of exhaustion, his eyes, rather than following the direction indicated by his tilting head, peer out from the image, directly engaging the viewer. He wears an overcoat; not fastened by the five visible buttons, the gaping garment reveals a buttoned waistcoat, under which are a shirt and a neck tie. On his lower half he wears breeches, stockings, and buckled shoes. The sagging wet clothes add to bodily features that give the impression of a corpulent body, which is accentuated by the narrow shoulders and a relatively wide waistline. The lower buttons of his tunic appear strained. The image is not static, there is dynamism. His right leg indicates upward movement, which suggests that as well as supplicating, Crusoe is lifting himself off the ground, raising himself up. Simultaneously the plate represents Crusoe’s call on God and his inner resolve to pull himself out of the sea and get on with living, hinting at what will come. Most previous visualizations illustrate Crusoe’s shipwreck by depicting him clinging to a rock against the backdrop of a ship foundering in a stormy 6 Historical meanings of Dutch words are taken from the “Historische woordenboeken” hosted by the Instituut voor de Nederlandse taal at http: / / wnt.inl.nl/ search/ Russell Palmer 28 sea. In the background of plate 1, waves break against the beach and foam swells around some rocks, denoting a turbulent ocean: the illustration shows Crusoe’s arrival on the island. While the plate appears unique to the edition, being neither borrowed from previous editions nor used subsequently, illustrating the moment Crusoe lands on the island and gives thanks to God has precedents. The 1761 French edition by Cailleau, Dufour and Cuissant, printed in Paris, pictures Crusoe walking along the beach whilst gesticulating upwards and gazing towards the sky. He faces his capsizing ship, which is visible in the background. The image is not only repeated in Cailleau’s 1782 edition, but also appears in Z. Chatelain & fils’ 1764 edition, their 1776 reprint, and their newly typeset edition issued a year later. A further image of Crusoe praising God occurs in the first instalment of Garnier’s Voyages Imaginaires (1787). It also shows Crusoe in similar clothes to Allart and Vis’ plate, but more youthful looking and standing. He looks out to sea, or may even have his eyes closed, while clasping his hands together above his head. The plate is signed by “C. P. Marillier” and L. S. Berthet”. 7 Although it illustrates the textual moment in which Crusoe walks along the beach thanking God, this plate may nonetheless have served as inspiration for Allart and Vis’s image, yet there is another possibility still. Rather than originating in an edition of Robinson Crusoe, it appeared in Abram Conelis’s Dutch-language 1776 edition of Hendrik Smeeks’s robinsonade, Krinke Kesmes, published in Amsterdam. In it, a young shipwrecked boy rejoices and thanks God for having found the buried chest of his lost ship, which is pictured sinking out at sea. The two images both depict a central, though differently rendered, supplicating figure. Resemblance to Allart and Vis’ plate derives from the pose of the supplicating boy who, kneeling on one leg, juts the other forward and leans it inwards, making the renderings of the two characters’ lower bodies strikingly similar. Significantly, the plates used in the Cailleau, Chatelain and Garnier editions all place Crusoe on the beach or on the grass just beyond it, which is supported textually: “je montai sur le haut de rivage, et je m’assis sur l’herbe” (Defoe 1787: 108). The Dutch translations are more specific and describe Crusoe climbing over the dunes to reach the grass (1720: 106; 1791: 88). These descriptions of Crusoe’s landing differ markedly from those in German and English editions, which describe Crusoe clambering up cliffs to reach the grass at the top (Defoe 2003: 38), a scene which is illustrated in plate 1 of the 1790 London edition, printed by the Logographic Press, designed by C. Metz and engraved by R. Pollard. Allart and Vis’ plate is faithful to the text they print in depicting Crusoe kneeling on the grass beyond the dunes, but it also illustrates a specifically detailed moment that does not exist in the same way in non-Dutch versions of the 7 Clément-Pierre Marillier designed a series of plates engraved by Louis-Sébastien Berthet that Garnier included in his three volumes of Robinson Crusoe. Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 29 text. Therefore, this precise image could not have been produced for readers of other languages. Figure 3. “Crusoe, verschrikt door een aardbeeving, klimt over zijn’wal”, Levensgeschiedenis en lotgevallen van Robinson Crusoe (Amsterdam, 1791). Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (call mark: General collection Defoe 52 P791). Russell Palmer 30 Plate 3 - as the second plate is numbered - is entitled “Crusoe, verschrickt door een aardbeeving; klimt over zijn’wall” (“Crusoe, terrified by an earthquake; climbs over his wall”). Rocks tumbling down onto the roof of his shelter signify the effects of the earthquake, while the strained trunk and bending leaves of a palm tree in the background testify to the winds (Figure 3). Crusoe rests his ladder against the palisade wall and, with his right foot on the first rung, has begun to make his exit. So far, the plate renders an accurate depiction of what is textually described in both Dutch and English editions (Defoe 1791: 156 & 2003: 153). In addition, the artist employs the visual convention of the raised hand to indicate that Crusoe is shielding himself from imminent danger. The action is not textually supported, but adds to the drama and dynamism of the image, which captures the action of the moment, illustrating both the danger and Crusoe’s impending escape to safety. Our protagonist has clearly been caught unaware, as he is not dressed for venturing outside of his walled enclosure. Rather, he is depicted in either the same clothes or very similar ones to those in which he arrived on the island and he does not yet wear a moustache. The foreground is clean and the view afforded into his shack reveals an orderly interior, just as he himself is presented. The scene is one of orderliness and calm that has been interrupted by the chaos of the natural disaster. Unlike the first two plates, the subsequent three illustrate new renderings of subjects that were also illustrated in earlier Dutch editions. The first of these - numbered plate 4 - is entitled simply “Crusoe maakt potten” (Crusoe makes pots). Unlike the caption accompanying the Jansoons’ plate (see Table 1), it does not offer any reason for Crusoe’s potting, leaving the reader to decide whether he pots from necessity or for pleasure. Crusoe the potter is common to many illustrated editions, but the composition of the 1791 engraving is altogether more balanced than that reproduced in the earlier editions. In the background, more of the sky is visible, and the image is framed on both sides: on the left of Crusoe’s shack, the rock to which it is attached and a tree form a column that is countered on the right by the rising plumes of smoke emitted from the kiln. The outline of the mountains, which corresponds with the height of the top of Crusoe’s head, horizontally divides the image. In earlier Dutch renditions, his shack dominates the left half of the image. Crusoe occupies only the lower third of the plate, in which he sits centrally, balancing a large pot on his left knee while supporting his seating with the other outspread leg. The implausibility of resting a large ceramic vessel on one’s knee for fine moulding around the rim, as it appears, is high; large unbaked vessels are delicate and heavy, and best worked on the ground or a large flat surface. In contrast, the 1791 engraving positions Crusoe slightly to the side, with a basin and its platform taking centre place. He sits on a large flat surface, possibly a rock, with the solid cuboid “potting table” wedged between his spread legs, an object that bears similarity to items visible in Plate 1 of “Potier de terre” in Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1765). Crusoe’s poise and posture is not only Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 31 more believable than in earlier renditions, it also demonstrates a greater acquaintance with the practicalities of potting. Crusoe works contently under the shade (or shadow) of the rock that in the previous plate was the cause of his alarm. Wearing the same attire as in the previous plate, his fully stockinged and shoed appearance again contrasts with the wilder image of Crusoe portrayed in earlier editions. Working with his hands, he engages with the vessel he has made from the earthly bounty of the island, seemingly at ease. In other renditions of the scene, including earlier Dutch illustrations, he is accompanied by his parrot Poll. Allart and Vis’ plate foregrounds the relationship between the potter and his materials. He pots alone. Figure 4. “De manier van Spijzen en huishouding van Crusoe”, Levensgeschiedenis en lotgevallen van Robinson Crusoe (Amsterdam, 1791). Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (call mark: General collection Defoe 52 P791). Russell Palmer 32 In the following plate, the viewer glimpses for the first time Crusoe with other islanders. Entitled “De manier van Spijzen en huishouding van Crusoe” (“The manner of Crusoe’s eating and household”), the scene depicts Crusoe dining and surrounded by his household of domesticated animals, or his “family”. The only non-domesticated animal, Poll, has been tamed and caged (Figure 4). She pokes her head out from the cage to look in Crusoe’s direction, while his dog sits at his side, glancing expectantly up at his master. The two cats sit either side of him, staring at each other from beneath the table. Based on the linguistic text, Clint Wilson III argues that the “table and chair offer a daily signifier that separates himself [Crusoe] from his nonhuman context; they make him human again” (2019: 296, original italics). However, we have already seen Crusoe sitting at a table, albeit of a different kind, as he pots. If in the potting scene we witness Crusoe mastering his environment, here he takes his place as the chief of his fellow islanders. Enthroned on his stool and surrounded by his attendants, Crusoe is not only the head of his household, but as the only householder, he extends his authority to cover the entire island. The caption draws specific attention to the manner of his food and eating. Unlike the caption to the Jansoons’ image, which emphasises the farcical (“klugtige”) way in which Crusoe eats and therefore his self-mockery, Allart and Vis’s neutral caption paves the way for a scene of orderliness and improvement. It conveys a level of European civilization: a glass bottle most likely containing rum, a colonial product, replaces the earthenware jug in the Jansoons’ earlier image, and the table is no longer cluttered with anything but the food and drink receptacles and their contents. Three sides of the glass bottle are distinctly visible, indicating that it is neither round nor square in profile, as is described textually (Defoe 1791: 182, 218), but hexagonal. Crusoe eats not with a knife and his hand, but directly from the knife, as if it were a fork, demonstrating a more refined manner of eating. Furthermore, the observant viewer will notice that the little finger of his right hand, which holds the knife, is extended. As Pat Rogers observes, “Crusoe is not just interested in structural alterations but also in improving the internal living arrangements” (1974: 375), to which we might add that he is also improving himself. The neatness and rustic refinement of within extends to outdoors, which visualizes elements of eighteenth-century improvement through a peaceful and ordered landscape (Rogers 1974: 388). The palisade wall shows no sign of the trees Crusoe plants in Defoe’s narrative; the trees which grow as wild as to create an impenetrable wall are, in fact, omitted from all the plates. Instead, the palisade wall forms a fence beyond which the distant untamed environment of the island is barely discernable. The fragility of Crusoe’s self-made civilized domesticity and his role as master are acknowledged in the next plate, as the prospect of human company is introduced. Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 33 Figure 5. “Crusoe ontdekte met verschrikking de Plaats der Canibaalsche maaltijden”, Levensgeschiedenis en lotgevallen van Robinson Crusoe (Amersterdam, 1791). Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (call mark: General collection Defoe 52 P791). Russell Palmer 34 The caption to Crusoe’s discovery of a cannibalistic feast departs from the Jansoons’ purely descriptive caption - “Crusoe ontdeckt de plaats der Canibaalse maaltyden” - by commenting on the manner with which Crusoe reacts (Figure 5). The additional adverbial phrase “met verschrikking” (“with horror”) warns the reader that Crusoe’s graphic rendering should not be read as mere astonishment or surprise. This is not to suggest that the depicted scene would otherwise be ambiguous; the verbal and visual messages are mutually reinforcing. Compositionally, the earlier Dutch engraving and Allart and Vis’s are similar in that trees are used to frame a view behind Crusoe of the island’s interior. Crusoe stands at the end of the pit in and around which are strewn the dismembered and skeletal remains of the cannibals’ feast. In the later plate, though, the human remains are larger, which makes their rendering not only more realistic - the size of the skulls in the earlier engraving are so much smaller that Crusoe’s own head as to suggest either a child or smaller primate - but also more obvious, and therefore intrusive. There is absolutely no question as to the object of Crusoe’s gaze. His upper body leans forward towards the pit, with his raised right hand denoting his fear. Together with the positioning of his legs, the artist graphically portrays the exact moment of discovery, in which Crusoe struggles to contain his horror and stop himself falling into the pit. The vitality of the scene contrasts starkly with the barely dynamic Crusoe encountered in earlier Dutch editions. Apart from differences in the bodily poses, the wide-open eyes and gaping mouth of the later Crusoe complete the visual rendering of fear and repulsion. Crusoe is depicted in his outdoor attire, as in the frontispiece, yet the scene is nonetheless one of a civilized man meeting savagery. The plates contained within the first volume do not complete the edition’s illustrative apparatus of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, but they must be considered on their own terms. They form part of a separate book that need not always be read in conjunction with the remainder of the Defoe’s text found in the second volume, which is a distinctly separate object. Though advertisements make it clear the set of three volumes were marketed and sold as a single work, a single edition, practices and the practicalities of reading dictate that the images contained in each volume will have been “read” at some point as individual narratives. Notwithstanding the likelihood of some readers, perhaps later generations, possessing only one or two of the volumes, it is impossible for anyone to read all three volumes at once. It is through these material pre-conditions of reading, what McGann refers to as “production structures” (1991: 82), that the book and its illustrations are able to act. The volume engages the reader with a sequence of images that is limited in its scope and number, emphasizing certain scenes and diminishing through exclusion the impact and memorability of episodes rendered only typographically. Moreover, the plates organize the text in such a way as to affect the perceived narrative, Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 35 whether it is the narrative codified in the typographical text or that encoded in the visual apparatus. And while these narratives need not differ from one another, I contend here that “the verbal text and the documentary materials” do not “operate together in a single literary result” (McGann 1991: 81). The overall narrative of Defoe’s work has been broken, cut short. When viewed in the order in which the illustrations are bound (and numbered), the frontispiece represents a prolepsis, figuring an image of Crusoe that does not occur textually until page 310 (1791); an image which by the late eighteenth century was already well-known across Europe through not only previous editions but also its use in robinsonades (Blewett 1995: 32; Festa 2011: 456; Jung 2020: 174-175). Given the common occurrence of Crusoe in his goat-skins and the widespread use of frontispieces in eighteenth-century editions of belles lettres, I do not, on the one hand, consider it as especially important in framing the narrative beyond evoking notions of being shipwrecked on a deserted island and surviving. On the other hand, the frontispiece - because of its familiarity and associations - offers specific narrative framing to plate 1 and all subsequent plates, relating to the reader that Crusoe is on an island and he has survived, even prospered to a fashion. The frontispiece operates as metonymic device, relying not on what is visualized, but on the visual and cultural literacy of the viewer. Its appearance at the very beginning enables the visual narrative to mimic the dual notions of time offered in Crusoe’s own recollected narration of his adventures and the progressive march of time offered in his diary. Having glimpsed at the future, the viewer must now travel back in time to start at the beginning of the tale. From this point on, the subsequent plates chronicle Crusoe’s progression to the textual moment encapsulated in the frontispiece, but deviate in doing so from the narrative offered by the linguistic text. Visual narration begins with Crusoe’s arrival on the island in plate 1. Its caption, along with the associative frontispiece, conveys the shipwrecking, and the viewer is confronted with a beached and supplicating Crusoe. The Providential act of surviving a shipwreck gives Crusoe the opportunity of a “Christian rebirth”, argues Richard Phillips: he “starts out as a man with almost no identity, and is constructed as the story proceeds” (2013: 31). In the linguistic text, this rebirth is possible because of the previous trials and sins of the protagonist, from Crusoe’s initial appeal to God during the storm after eloping from Hull and the subsequent shipwrecking at Yarmouth Roads to his escape with Xury and his original sin of paternal disobedience. Some or all of these episodes in Crusoe’s pre-island adventures were frequently illustrated in English, French and German editions, as well as the earlier Dutch ones. The occurrence of plate 1 over a hundred pages into the book means that Crusoe’s pre-island history does not figure in the visual narrative. A past is indicated nonetheless - the man who reaches out to God in thanks is wet and bedraggled, but he is also clothed in “the trappings and symbols of his civilisation” (Phillips 2013: 31) - but the past is unknown, imagined Russell Palmer 36 by the reader and not necessarily that of Defoe’s text. The visual narrative encourages a reading that foregrounds the island adventure, rather than any tale of Christian moral progression (the edition also lacks a further device of moral guidance, a preface). Readers could literally have skipped the first hundred or so pages, using the plate as an indicator of where to start reading. Robinson Crusoe is transformed into an island adventure, obliterating the story of religious progress and reconfiguring the moral tale. While the second plate, which pictures Crusoe’s escape from falling rocks during an earthquake, may be read as Divine intervention, it also demonstrates the potential dangers which abound in his new foreign habitat and starts to visually chart Crusoe’s improvements of that environment. His dwelling is fenced off from the wild of an island that is never visualized in any detail. Nevertheless, his mastery over the island is visually represented by his potting, through which he turns clay - the island itself - into something useful, as well as the recreation of European domesticity. While his rough and ready abode may not have drawn direct comparisons with readers’ own homes, there are nonetheless cues to his civilized manners. His dwelling is uncluttered and orderly. In both the earthquake and the dining scenes the viewer is admitted only to the public areas of his dwelling; no caves, cellars or “kitchens” are visualized. Crusoe is rendered “a good householder” (Rogers 1974: 377), but also a civilized and sophisticated man: from his eating habits to always appearing shoed 8 and, whenever fitting, dressed in his native clothes, rather than his goat-skins. Depicting neither Crusoe’s dream nor his conversation, the Christian narrative hinted at in the initial plates subsides into one of human endeavour and improvement. Moreover, the tale also becomes one of a man on his own on an island, deracinated from his natal environment. Crusoe is pictured continuously devoid of any human company. The production structures of the edition separate the illustrations in volume one from those in subsequent volumes, mimicking Crusoe’s own stranded state. At the same time, as Crusoe claims dominion over his island, the material and visual apparatuses of the volume draw readers towards a narrative that focuses entirely on the island as a place of isolation. Both Crusoe and volume one act autonomously until the final plate: Crusoe independently of other humans and volume one without its companion volumes. A tension exists between isolation and the true relational (co-dependent) character of both Crusoe and the first volume. Discovery of cannibalistic remains and picturing Crusoe’s horror visualizes this tension. Crusoe is not alone after all, just like the volume. In order to resolve the tension between Crusoe’s separation from the world 8 The fact that Crusoe always appears shoed would have meant that, should the scene in which Crusoe discovers the print of a bare human foot in the sand have been featured, there would have been no ambiguity as whether the footprint was his own or that of someone else. Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 37 and his presumed escape, the reader must overcome the physical separation of volume one from volume two. The final plate operates as a visual cliff-hanger by offering “circumstantial evidence” for the presence of others (Folkenflik 2000: 467), enticing the reader to perform that very act. The first four plates contained in the second volume complete The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures. Crusoe’s independence and isolation are replaced in images that portray our protagonist as fearless, redeeming, and powerful; the savage is tamed and civilized, and white Europeans overcome barbarity. Unlike the plates of the first volume, all four plates visualize multiple human characters in addition to Crusoe. The first depicts the scene of Friday swearing his allegiance to his rescuer. Friday, who is not named for another six pages (52), kneels with his head on the ground, placing his new master’s foot on his head with his right hand. Crusoe holds his hand over Friday, extending his index finger in warning, or perhaps a blessing. In the background lie Friday’s dead and wounded aggressors. This plate and the next, which portrays Crusoe rescuing the Spaniard, represent re-visualized and reversed rather than re-imagined renderings of the engraved scenes in the Jansoons’ edition, although both are more artistically rendered than their predecessors. Greater attention is paid to the facial expressions of subjects and while the Jansoons’ edition illustrates Crusoe rather illogically looking at the Spaniard while cutting his bonds, he is here seen observing what he is doing, while the Spaniard looks on at his rescuer anxiously. Named in the caption, the cannibals are visible in the distance, dead and fleeing, pursued by Friday, who appears almost as a second Crusoe figure and takes aim at them. By the time we reach the penultimate plate, Crusoe is transformed. No longer in his goat-skins, the English captain has furnished him with provisions and clothes (a scene illustrated in the Jansoons’ edition) and Crusoe assumes governorship of the island. He stands to the right, with Friday behind him wearing English clothes and shoes for the first time, visualizing his place in Crusoe’s civilized European world as his servant. Both look at the group of English mutineers, who are described in the caption as “prisoners” (“gevangenen”). Gesturing towards the English ship anchored a little from the shore, beyond the longboat and positioned at the centre of the image, he points out their old mutinous captain, hanging from a yard arm. The image portrays a graphic warning of the fate that awaited the mutineers if they were to break the conditions of their release. Crusoe is the undoubted focal point of the plate. The startling white of his new attire stands out from the tones of grey in which the rest of the scene is depicted, and his dominant pose, with an extended arm, allows him to appear larger than the other men. Resplendent, all physical traces of his island life are erased, including the facial hair. Crusoe takes his place in the colonial racial hierarchy in which he and his white Christian countrymen reign supreme. Ready to rejoin his civilized world, the only accompanying aspect Russell Palmer 38 of his island existence is Friday, who is depicted dark skinned, in darkercoloured clothes, and who stands obediently behind his white master. Figure 6. “Vermaaklijk voorval van Crusoe’s knecht, Vrijdag, met een’beer”, Levensgeschiedenis en lotgevallen van Robinson Crusoe (Amsterdam, 1791). Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (call mark: General collection Defoe 52 P791). Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 39 It is the remnants of his wild island life, personified in Friday, that are the subject of the final plate (Figure 6). The scene depicted directly follows the wolf attack in which Friday demonstrates his bravery by shooting a wolf and rescuing the party’s guide (as illustrated in several French-language editions, see Table 2). It shows Friday clinging to the end of a tree branch, facing an advancing and ferocious bear. The rest of the party look on from the saddle. His weapon and hat lie on the ground below, alerting the reader to his unarmed state, but also that in losing his hat, he retains a little of the wild when compared to his European onlookers. At first glance, this scene depicts danger and possibly bravery, but the caption steers the reader towards a comic interpretation: “Vermaaklijk voorval van Crusoe’s knecht, Vrijdag, met een’beer” (“Amusing incident of Crusoe’s servant, Friday, with a bear”). Instead of presenting Friday and his people as ingenious for their way of rendering an otherwise lethal opponent benign, Friday is cast as the fool. Although a textually-supported interpretation of the exact moment, it denies Friday both the cleverness Crusoe credits him with and the admiration and applause he receives from his audience of onlookers in earlier and later moments in the novel. Rather, his previous bravery is omitted and his racial inferiority is carried through to the end. Regardless of the visual portrayal of Friday, the concluding plates provide a narrative in which Crusoe is transformed from the eighteenth-century improver and colonizer portrayed in the visual narrative of volume one, claiming control of the land and its resources, to a man who holds sway over people as well. From his rescuing of Friday and the Spaniard from the savages to his merciful release of the English prisoners, Crusoe is cast as a benevolent overlord or colonial governor. Read as a whole, the plates that visualize The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures offer a metatextual commentary on the protagonist. Crusoe is visualized as an active being, as a man who has the skills and inner drive to survive and succeed. His struggles and failures are omitted or, in the case of his arrival and the earthquake scene, offered up to the reader as demonstration of his ability to overcome adversity. He is a man in charge of his own destiny. From his arrival on the island and the beginning of the visual narrative, he settles and gains knowledge of his new environment, a knowledge which affords him a position of power when faced with others, who he rescues from their reduced states of liberty. An isolated island existence is central to the visual narrative. In volume one, the entire narrative is confined to Crusoe’s island and it is only at the very end of the novel that Crusoe is visualized in Europe. In omitting his earlier exploits and foregrounding his island existence, the narrative eclipses the themes of travel and adventure proffered by the typographicallyrendered linguistic text. As Pat Rogers has pointed out, “Robinson Crusoe may owe much to travel-books, but its hero spends twenty-eight years virtually standing on the spot” (Rogers 1974: 375). Nevertheless, emphasizing the island motif was not common in illustrated editions of the eighteenth Russell Palmer 40 century, nor was it a peculiarly local phenomenon. Eighteenth-century English abridgements “were designed to emphasize Crusoe’s travels and adventures” (Howell 2014: 299), as were chapbook editions (O’Malley 2011). Only in the nineteenth century did English abridgements begin to “give little mention to Crusoe’s imperial career, prior to his arrival on the island” (Phillips 2013: 32). Dutch adaptations and imitations of Robinson Crusoe also frequently privileged travel and adventure over an isolated island existence (Buijnsters 1969: 8). A focus on the island-based events also transforms the didactic nature of the tale. Rather than a Christian storyline of rebirth and redemption, the moral becomes one of human endeavour. While a story of human endeavour, the visual narrative does not merely proffer one of simple productivity. Renderings of Crusoe’s environment and the ways in which he has adapted it for his needs foreground the “practical petit bourgeois colonialism” that Phillips locates in later English abridgements (2013: 32). Crusoe improves his “estate” while never letting himself become truly wild. Despite his appearance in the goat-skins, he is frequently pictured in his European clothes and never with bare feet, unlike in so many other illustrated editions. The Crusoe depicted never ceases to be a civilized European. The illustrations contained in Allart and Vis’ edition facilitate multiple readings through their visual renderings of textual moments. By spreading the novel over one and a half volumes, both the linguistic and the visual narratives are broken, yet both actively guide and encourage the reader to specific, if different, interpretative ends. Acting through their materiality, the position and order of the plates invites the reader to skip sections of the typographically-realized linguistic text, particularly at the beginning and end of the novel. Not only do the illustrations present a much shorter narrated time, but the frontispiece also disrupts the linear temporal structure, altering the narrative time. The visual renderings of his environment contradict those painted by Defoe’s text and by supplying Crusoe the potter with a table, the plates further destabilize the order of events within the linguistic narrative, especially given the difficulties Crusoe recounts with levelling his dining table. The artist’s portrayal frequently offers criticism of Defoe’s text through embellishments, many of which are textually unsubstantiated: from employing artistic conventions, such as Crusoe raising his hand to shield himself from falling rocks during an earthquake, to introducing hexagonal glass bottles and raised little fingers in the dining scene. The visual paratexts and production structures of the edition provide a critical commentary on Robinson Crusoe that reformulates potential readings in ways that not only mark it out from earlier Dutch and non-Dutch editions, but also contribute to the transnational textual condition of Defoe’s classic. Visual Criticism in the Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 41 Acknowledgements I would also like to thank Ton Broos for his helpful discussions regarding the veracity of Buys and Vinkeles as the likely artists and engraver of the 1791 plates. I am grateful to Sandro Jung for commenting on previous drafts and to the anonymous peer reviewer for their helpful suggestions. Works Cited Barchas, Janine (2003). Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blewett, David (1995). The Illustration of Robinson Crusoe, 1719-1920. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe Ltd. Boekzaal (1721). “La Vie & les Avantures surprenantes de ROBINSON CRUSOE”. Maendelyke Uittreksels, of Boekzael der geleerde waerelt; Dertiende deel. Voor July 1721. T’Amsterdam, By Gerard onder de Linden. 58-93. Boekzaal (1804). “W. van Vliet, te Amsterdam”. Maendelyke Uittreksels, of Boekzael der geleerde waerelt; Honderd en agt-en-zenventigste deel. Voor January 1804. Te Amsterdam: By d’Erven D. onder de Linden en Zoon. 64-65. Boekzaal (1811). “Ten geschenken voor de jeugd”. Maendelyke Uittreksels, of Boekzaal der geleerde waereld; Honderd en drei-en-negentigste deel. Voor November 1811. Te Amsterdam: bij d’Erven D. Onder de Lindon en Zoon. 517. Broos, Ton (1981-1982). “Misdruk en mispunt: Johannes Allart (1754-1816) II”. Spektator 11: 212-223. Bryan, Michael (1886). Dictionary of Painter and Engravers, Biographical and Critical, Volume I: A-K. London: George Bell and Sons. Bryan, Michael (1889). Dictionary of Painter and Engravers, Biographical and Critical, Volume II: L-Z. London: George Bell and Sons. Buijnsters, Petrus Jacobus. (1969). Imaginaire reisverhalen in Nederland gedurende de 18e eeuw. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff. Buijnsters-Smets, Leotine (1984). “Jacobus Buys als boekillustrator”. Documentatieblad werkgroep Achtiende eeuw 63-64. 91-107. Buisman J.Fzn., Michael (1960). Populaire prozaschrijvers van 1600 tot 1815. Romans, novellen, verhalen, levensbeschrijvingen, arcadia’s, sprookjes. Amsterdaem: B.M. Israël. Defoe, Daniel (1720). Het leven en de wonderbaare gevallen van Robinson Crusoe, behelzende onder andere ongehoorde uitkomsten een verhaal van zyn agt en twintig jaarig verblyf op een onbewoond eiland, gelegen op de kust van America by de mond van de rivier Oronooque. t’ Amsterdam: by de Jansoons van Waesberge. Defoe, Daniel (1787). Voyage Imaginaires, Songes, Visions, et Romans Cabalistiques. Tome Premier. La vie et les aventures suprentantes de Robinson Crusoe. A Amsterdam, et se trove à Paris: [Charles Garnier]. Defoe, Daniel (1791). Levensgeschiednis en Lotgevallen van Robinson Crusoe, behelzende onder andere ongehoorde uitkomsten, een verhaal van zyn agt-en-twintig jaarig verblyf op een onbewoond eiland, gelegen op de kust van America, bij de mond van de rivier Oronoque. Te Amsterdam en Rotterdam: bij J. Allart en D. Vis. Defoe, Daniel (2003). Robinson Crusoe, ed. with an introduction and notes by John Richetti. London: Penguin. Festa, Lynn (2011). “Crusoe’s Island of Misfit Things”. The Eighteenth Century 52.3- 4. 443-471. Russell Palmer 42 Folkenflik, Robert (2000). “The New Model Eighteenth-Century Novel”. Eighteenth- Century Fiction 12.2-3. 459-478. Folkenflik, Robert (2002). “Tobias Smollett, Anthony Walker, and the First Illustrated Serial Novel in English”. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 14.3-4. 507-532. Free, Melissa (2006). “Un-Erasing Crusoe: Farther Adventures in the Nineteenth Century”. Book History 9. 89-130. Gosden, Chris (2005). “What Do Objects Want? ” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12.3. 193-211. Groningen Courant (1791). “ROBINSON CRUSOE”. 28 June 1791: 1. Howell, Jordan (2014). “Eighteenth-Century Abridgements of Robinson Crusoe”. The Library 15.3. 292-343. Jung, Carlien (2005). “Reinier Vinkeles (1741-1816). Groot kunstenaar en eigenzinnige achttiende-eeuwer”. Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman 28. 118-129. Jung, Sandro (2020). “Book Illustration and the Transnational Mediation of Robinson Crusoe in 1720”. Philological Quarterly 99.2. 171-201. Kipins, Andrew B. (2015). “Agency between Humanism and Posthumanism: Latour and his opponents”. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5.2. 43-58. McGann, Jerome J. (1991). The Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. McKenzie, D. F. (1999). Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meijer, Pieter (1781). Tafereel van Natuur en Konst, Achtiende Deel. Amsterdam: by Pieter Meijer. Mitchell, William J. T. (2005). “There Are No Visual Media”. Journal of Visual Culture 4.2. 257-266. O’Malley, Andrew (2011). “Poaching on Crusoe’s Island: Popular Reading and Chapbook Editions of Robinson Crusoe”. Eighteenth-Century Life 35.2. 18-38. Oprechte Haerlemsche Courant (1791a). “De Wondervolle Reize”. 25 January: 1. Oprechte Haerlemsche Courant (1791b). “ROBINSON CRUSOE”. 30 June: 2. Phillips, Richard (2013). Mapping Men and Empire: Geographies of Adventure. London: Routledge. Rogers, Pat (1974). “Crusoe’s Home”. Essays in Criticism 24.4. 375-390. Staverman, W. H. (1907). Robinson Crusoe in Nederland: Een bijdrage tot de geschiednis van den roman in de XVIIIe eeuw. Groningen: M. De Waal. van Veen, Coenraad Frederik (1980). “Een bibliografische excursie op het gebied van het 18e-eeuwse Nederlandse kinderboek”. Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw 45. 3-19. Wilson, Clint, III (2019). “A Table of Prohibited Degrees: The Appetites and Affinities of Robinson Crusoe”. The Eighteenth Century 60.3. 293-310. Russell Palmer School of Foreign Studies Shanghai University of Finance and Economics