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Frontispiece for “Robinson Crusoe” — "My Father was a wise and grave man: gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design."
Artist: Thomas Stothard
Engraver: C. Heath
1782, 1790
Copper-engraving
11 cm high by 8.4 cm wide
Source: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, facing title-page.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befal me.
My father, a wise and grave man man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons, more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father's house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raisingmy fortune through application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. [Chapter I, p. 9-10]
Stothard initially provided fifteen plates in Harrison's 1782 edition, then a more comprehensive set for John Stockdale's 1790 edition. Stothard added five plates to the second group of illustrations for this edition, emphasizing Crusoe as a community and military leader of the joint English-Spanish colonisation of the Caribbean island. That quite often there is a parallel illustration in the Cruikshank series suggests Cruikshank was well aware of Stothard's illustrations. Here, for example, Cruikshank has provided a slightly less sentimental scene, omitting the mother entirely, in Robinson Crusoe and his Father (1831).
The third edition of this decade of revival [at the end of the eighteenth century] was the most sumptuous of the three. Published by John Stockdale in 1790 and accompanied, significantly, by Chalmers' Life and extravagant praise of Defoe, it was illustrated by a new set of fourteen drawings by Stothard. The transformation we have witnessed in Friday as he emerges from impersonality into the idealized primitive man is carried a stage further. No longer a figure of pathos or comedy, and certainly not of grotesque subservience, Friday now assumes the attributes of the Noble Savage, the idealized primitive so much discussed in the eighteenth century, who can take his place as the fit companion to Crusoe [PL IX]. Ever since the discovery of the new world in the fifteenth century, Europeans had been projecting onto primitive ]peoples, above all the North American Indian, qualities they sought within themselves, but which they feared they had lost or had never had. Although he took on different forms for different writers, the noble savage became a convenient symbol for uncorrupted virtue and innate nobility that threw intQ relief the corruption of European behaviour and institutions. Crusoe's description of Friday as 'a comely handsome Fellow, perfectly well made; with straight strong Limbs' (205), and his long debate with himself over the question of the barbarity of the cannibals — he concludes that they are no worse than the Spanish — reflects Defoe's awareness of contemporary discussion of the topic. [Blewett, p. 33]
Born in 1632, the boy went aboard a London-bound ship on 1 September 1651; accordingly, contrary to the image in the frontispiece, the interview occurred when Crusoe was nineteen rather than, as Stothard implies, thirteen or fourteen. The textual allusion to the New Testament parable inspired Stothard's initial illustration of the wayward youth who refuses to obey his father's wish to remain at home and engage in trade. Although Robinson's mother is sympathetic to both her husband's and her son's wishes, she refuses to support Robinson's cause. Minimizing background detail, the classical grouping contextualises the family discussion, placing it in the father's bedroom; moreover, Stothard's including a cane for the elder Crusoe clearly implies the old man's infirmity. Indeed, it serves an an analogue for young Robinson himself, who should be his father's prop and support in his old age. The artist's conception emphasizes the age difference between the fashionably dressed boy and his decrepit father, stiffly seated in a sumptuous arm-chair. The similarity of the profiles of mother and child impart a certain femininity to the youth, trapped between his parents and their plans for his future. Tenderly the old man grasps the boy's arm in entreaty. "Stothard learned to draw not from life studies, but from copying antique sculpture and the works of Raphael, and he urged all young artists to do the same" (Blewett, p. 32). This initial composition, foregrounding three statuesque figures in emblematic poses, bears a marked resemblance in its figures and overall composition to Raphael's tapestry designs for the Stanze della Segnatura and Stanze di Raffaello in the Vatican apartments of the Pope, for that Renaissance artist's studies of classical torsos were Stothard's inspiration.
Left: Cruikshank's 1831 realisation of the keynote, casting the boy as the Prodigal Son, Young Crusoe and his Father (Chapter I). Centre: Wehnert's depiction of the gouty elder admonishing his son for an unacceptable travel lust, Crusoe's father giving his advice.
Above: The Cassell's house-artist's realistic wood-engraving of the final interview between young Crusoe, yearning to travel, and his cautious parent, advising him to go into business in York, Crusoe advised by his Father.
Defoe published the first part of the story on 25 April 1719; a second edition came out on 9 May, and the third and fourth editions followed on 4 June and 7 August. In Hutchins' first issue (of two) of the third edition, the tailpiece depicts a lion instead of a phoenix. In the inferior sequel, Farther Adventures (20 August 1719), Defoe has Crusoe and Friday return to the island. In the original Stothard narrative-pictorial sequence, he composed nine plates for volume 1, and seven for volume 2.
Of the early illustrated editions, Stothard's in James Harrison's 1782 edition (re-printed several times, with additions, including John Stockdale's 1790 edition) was the second of eight such illustrated editions. However, the first three were but slightly illustrated, and only the fourth (1805) had a full program of illustration. The most commonly reproduced illustrations from the nineteenth century are the one hundred and twenty lithographs by Wal Paget (London: Cassell, 1891). Prior to the nineteenth century, publishers usedillustrations as a "value-added" feature only after a novel had achieved commercial success.
1820. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Embellished with Engravings from Designs by Thomas Stothard, Esq. R.A. In Two Volumes. London: printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies. Designs by Thomas Stothard, engraving by C. Heath; 20 full-page illustrations, plus 2 title-page vignettes. . . . In his later illustrations, Stothard de-emphasized Crusoe's solitary life on the island in favor of the communal aspects of the novel, also presenting Crusoe's story as a "progress" in the tradition of William Hogarth's work and The Pilgrim's Progress (Blewett 49). . . .
Blewett, David. "Robinson Crusoe, Friday, and the Noble Savage: The Illustration of the Rescue of Friday Scene in the Eighteenth Century." Man and Nature, Vol. 5 (1986), 29–49. https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/man/1986-v5-man0238/1011850ar.pdf
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Written by Himself. Illustrated by Thomas Stothard; engraving by C. Heath. London: Bliss, Sands, and Foster, 1820.
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, with introductory verses by Bernard Barton, and illustrated with numerous engravings from drawings by George Cruikshank expressly designed for this edition. 2 vols. London: Printed at the Shakespeare Press, by W. Nichol, for John Major, Fleet Street, 1831.
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Illustrated by Edward H. Wehnert. London: Bell and Daldy, 1862.
De Foe, Daniel. Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, including A Memoir of the Author, and an Essay on his Writings. Illustrated by Phiz. London & New York: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1864.
De Foe, Daniel. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Written by Himself. Illustrated by Gilbert, Cruikshank, and Brown. London: Darton and Hodge, 1867?].
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. (1831). Major's Edition. London: Chatto & Windus, 1890.
Defoe, Daniel.The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, as Related by Himself. Illustrated by Wal Paget. London: Cassell, 1891.
"The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Extra-Extra-Illustrated (T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1820): Scope and Contents." PACSCL Finding Aids. http://dla.library.upenn.edu/cocoon/dla/pacscl/ead.html?id=PACSCL_RBCat_RBCat&sort=date_added_sort%20asc&fq=name_facet%3A%22Stothard%2C%20Thomas%2C%201755-1834%22&
Patten, Robert L. "Phase 2: "'The Finest Things, Next to Rembrandt's,' 1720–1835." Chapter 20, "Thumbnail Designs." George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art, vol. 1: 1792-1835. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers U. P., 1992; London: The Lutterworth Press, 1992. Pp. 325-339.
Last modified 8 February 2018