ABSTRACT
Illustration studies, in the sense of the systematic study of how illustrated works produce meanings by the complex interaction of text and image, has only become a serious scholarly discipline in its own right in the twenty-first century, 1 and it is still exploring its territory and developing its methods. Illustration in the works of Trollope is one of many topics demanding sustained study. Recent scholarship has gone beyond earlier critical models, which centred on the attractiveness and appropriateness of the illustrations, and on what is known about their commissioning and execution. Some accounts included advice on the collectability of the plates. What is new in the approach which is now called “illustration studies” is that while noticing issues of attractiveness and fidelity, it takes it as given that the meaning of an illustrated work is generated by both its verbal and visual elements. Nowadays we devote attention to the meanings which the images generate by interaction with the text. Illustration researchers also question inherited assumptions, such as that the text rules supreme over the images, and that illustration is a one-way process, in which the images draw from verbal text but do not feed back into it. To avoid these fallacies, we use terms which clearly express that the illustrated text exists in two media simultaneously – that is, that it is a “bimedial” text. Furthermore illustration as a phenomenon consists of three parts: the image in the book, the text and/or the portion of the text to which the image relates, and the caption or title which designates the image. The scholar should consider all three parts: they may be mutually supportive or they may set up enriching or damaging uncertainties of meaning.
