ABSTRACT
We have seen how the importance of images in children’s books was recognised by publishers in the nineteenth century, with Hachette and Hetzel employing established and highly regarded artists to illustrate their publications. e images served to complement and visualise the text, but, despite the excellence of the results, in many cases few concessions were made to the age and ability of the young reader to read these images fully. Few artists produced specically child-oriented images like those of Kate Greenaway and John Tenniel in Britain. Towards the end of the century, however, the status of the image began to change, moving from a position of addition to the text or educational aid to become the main focus of the reader’s attention and pleasure. As has been seen in chapter 5, the general increase in literacy resulting from the Ferry laws on education had produced a new mass public who had little or no experience of reading as a leisure activity.1 To cater for this new enlarged readership, publishers in the early years of the twentieth century were producing increasing numbers of illustrated papers and histoires en images in large print runs. In magazines and albums, or picture books, aimed at young children, the image was served by the text rather than the other way round, creating a new genre in which ‘le visible supplante le lisible’.2
