Photographs, drawings, engravings, lithographs… In the 19th century, technical progress allowed images to take over the book, definitively disrupting the relationship with reading, and blurring the boundaries between noble and popular arts. The book is showing off, increasingly sporting shimmering covers and seductive illustrations. It attracts the eye of onlookers in bookstore windows, enriches the libraries of refined collectors or is multiplied in industrial and popular productions, less demanding on the quality of images and printing.
This work focuses on the inaugural image which adorns the threshold of the book: the frontispiece. Heir to a long tradition as much architectural as editorial, it borrows from the 19th century a thousand and one faces, from the creative fantasy of the romantic bookstore to innovative fin-de-école research, from the bibliophile book to the development of the illustrated press. A commercial argument in a context of increased competition between publishing houses, it is also a reflection of the evolution of the arts and an essential witness to a history of the book in which the great artists of the 19th century rub shoulders with the forgotten artisans of the illustration. Following the metamorphoses of the frontispiece further questions reading practices as well as the ambition to transmit knowledge and literature in a century which profoundly transforms the relationship with the printed object.
Summary
Introduction
Delphine Gleizes & Axel Hohnsbein
First part. Frontispiece states and empires
The establishment of the book: remarks on the frontispiece title in the 17th century
Olivier Leplatre
The frontispiece, manifesto of the book: definition, typology, functions
Ségolène Le Men
A book in his image. The frontispiece portrait between tradition and reinvention (1850‑1890)
Marine Le Bail
End-of-century frontispieces
Évanghélia Stead
Second part. Stone and paper: the arts in frontispiece
The frontispieces of architects: the art of space in a nutshell (Paris 1798‑1906)
Jean-Philippe Garric
The frontispieces of Viollet-le-Duc: renewing a Renaissance formula through the prism of the illustrated edition
Laurent Baridon
The frontispieces of the Cadart albums and the valorization of the original etching (1862‑1881)
Valérie Sueur-Hermel
Exhibition, exemplification and mise en abyme. The series of frontispieces of 19th century engravers couple Henri Beraldi
Camille Page
The photographic frontispiece in the French literary book in the 19th century
Paul Edwards
Nerval, melancholy mage – encodings romantic
Gabrielle Bornancin-Tomasella
From the round to the image: when statuary illustrates the frontispiece
Claire said
The Backstage Painter : unfold to see better
Benedict Jarrasse
Third part. From the book to the album: poetics of the threshold image
Tell through images. The frontispiece and its stories
Delphine Gleizes
On modern poetic frontispieces
Adrien Cavallaro
The frontispiece of Flowers of Evil : an ancient and ultra-romantic system
Hélène Védrine
In search of the right frontispiece in early comics
Jacques Dürrenmatt
Grandville, the other frontispiece ofAnother world
Laurent Baridon
MISERY by Victor Hugo. The frontispiece between allegory and “thing seen”
Delphine Gleizes
“Attached portraits”: illustrations of Cursed poets (1884, 1888)
Adrien Cavallaro
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea : misleading invitation to an extraordinary journey
Simon Brean
The culture of war on the frontispiece
Sylvain Lesage
Fourth part. Mirror of knowledge, mirror of beliefs
A practical imagination: French cookbooks in the 19th century
Frédérique Desbuissons
Specificities and functions of the frontispiece of romantic cartonnages: the case of the Ardant and Mgard editions
Nelly Kabac
The frontispieces of science Books: an image problem?
Axel Hohnsbein
The history of perfume according to Rimmel and Chéret
Erika Wicky
A cartographic frontispiece? There France illustrated by Charles Avril
Gilles Palsky
A very “honest” prison: Paris Prisons by G. Bonneron
Marion Croisy
L’Almageste and its double frontispiece: sciences, techniques and society
Norbert Verdier and Aurélien Gautreau
The frontispiece of thePopular astronomy : function and international circulation of a chromolithograph
Kevin Pelladeaud
Fifth part. Books, magazines, posters: moving frontispieces
Vignettes, professions of faith, fictional universes: a media device of the small press
Jean-Didier Wagner
From the vignette to the frontispiece: the Aubert image in the window and in the collection
Valérie Stiénon
The little theater of emotions: frontispieces in the novelistic deliveries of the 19th century
Matthieu Letourneux
The Beauties of the Opera : a book-show
Benedict Jarrasse
The devil of the announcement. Advertising circulations of a famous frontispiece
Laurence Guellec
Threshold of the book, threshold of time: entering prehistory with Camille Flammarion
Emmanuel Boldrini
Frontispiece or cover? Faces of the popular press at the turn of the century
Axel Hohnsbein
Bibliography
Presentation of the authors
Index of proper nouns
Index of technical terms
Table of illustrations
Iconographic credits
