Frontispiece: Maclise's Portrait of Harrison Ainsworth
Daniel Maclise
Engraver: Samuel Freeman (1773-1857)
1844
Steel-engraving
10.5 high x 9.7 cm, vignetted
Frontispiece. London: Published by G. Routledge & Sons, Broadway, Ludgate Hill [1880].
For the initial volume edition of Ainsworth's Windsor Castle. An Historical Romance, its publisher Henry Colburn commissioned a fresh portrait study of the author, whose slightly more youthful likeness by William Greatback (1802-1885) had prefaced the rogue novel Jack Sheppard, illustrated by George Cruikshank.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Comment
Both Greatback and Maclise conceive of the middle-aged Yorkshire novelist as the literary heir to Sir Walter Scott, the Father of the Historical Novel — dead just twelve years, and in the 1840s still a best-selling author. It is interesting that the publisher has used a portrait by an artist other than the book's illustrators. The portrait-artist makes Ainsworth look every inch the distinguished writer and editor, although perhaps not quite the romantic figure with tusselled hair, keen eyes, and striking profile that Greatback composed just four years earlier. Complicating the issue of the accuracy of the frontispiece portrait is the fact that the 1901 pocket edition, which reproduces all the other steel-engravings and all one hundred wood-engravings, has substituted the 1839 image of Ainsworth by Greatback for the 1843 portrait by Daniel Maclise.
The Engraved Title-page for the 1844 Volume and Greatback's Frontispiece (1839)
Left: The original ornamental title-page for Henry Colburn's volume edition of Windsor Castle. An Historical Romance (1844, updated by Routledge to 1880). Right: William Greatbach's Portrait of William Harrison Ainsworth for the 1839 Bentley triple-decker Jack Sheppard. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Related Materials
- William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) — King of the Historical Potboiler: A Brief Biography
- A Chronology of William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882)
- An Introduction to the Cruikshank and Johannot illustrations for Ainsworth's Windsor Castle. An Historical Romance (1843)
Bibliography
Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. A Romance. With 28 illustrations by George Cruikshank. In three volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1839.
Ainsworth, William Harrison. Windsor Castle. An Historical Romance. Illustrated by George Cruikshank and Tony Johannot. With designs on wood by W. Alfred Delamotte. London: Routledge, 1880. Based on the Henry Colburn edition of 1844.
Last modified 4 February 2018