Introduction

Introduction

“…8 Interestingly, these popular products currently suffer a similar fate to book illustrations, which, with the exception of the segment commissioned for luxury editions, have begun to benefit from rigorous critical attention only in recent decades. Our collective premise was that discarding this 'popular' segment of cultural production inspired by, based on, or loosely linked to eighteenth-century fiction is an implicitly negative comment on its perceived value and betrays a purist allegiance to the text.…”