Note 2 to the author's "Millais's "Mariana": Literary Painting, the Pre-Raphaelite Gothic, and the Iconology of the Marian Artist"
Anthony Trollope's estimate of the work Millais did for him supports my belief that he was a fine book illustrator and a close reader of the texts on which he worked:
In every figure that he drew it was his object to promote the views of the writer whose work he had under-taken to illustrate, and he never spared himself any pains in studying the works so as to enable him to do so. I have carried on some of those characters from book to book, and have had my own ideas impressed indelibly on my memory by the excellence of his delineations.
Quoted in John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais President of the Royal Academy, 2 vols. (London: Methuen, 1899) 1: 283.
Last modified 7 October 2001