The Aesthetics of Authenticity in the Illustrated World of Warwick Goble, c. 1912-1916

Abstract

The imperial practice of collecting stories from the east and transforming them into illustrated books, primarily for circulation in western book markets, can be traced back to orientalist endeavours of the long nineteenth century. While M. Frere’s Old Deccan Days or Hindoo Fairy Legends current in Southern India (1870), contained only two, small, black and white illustrations by an anonymous artist, eventually books started including several full-page colour illustrations. This publishing pattern favouring the inclusion and involvement of illustrations in the circulation of collected stories often brought contesting notions of authenticity in dialogue. The transformative individualism of the artist as the illustrator, at the turn of the twentieth century, expanded and problematized the premises of circulated narratives in intriguingly complex ways. My article critically examines the nature and consequences of such aesthetic reworking by attempting to unpack the semiotics of Warwick Goble’s illustrations for collected Indian narratives.