Extra-illustrating Rousseau’s Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse: The case of the Defer de Maisonneuve edition (1793–1800)

Abstract

While scholarly treatments of extra-illustration have focused almost exclusively on the Anglo-American context, this article considers the phenomenon from a French perspective, by examining two contrasting but previously unstudied extra-illustrated copies of Rousseau’s bestselling novel Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), each hosted within the large-scale Defer de Maisonneuve edition of Rousseau’s Œuvres (1793–1800). The present article compares these spectacular copies and situates them in the context of French traditions of bibliophilia and connoisseurship, thus nuancing the picture of extra-illustration, which has emerged from Anglo-American accounts, and adding a new dimension to the growing field of work on the iconography surrounding Julie. The two copies, held by the British Library (London, United Kingdom) and Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Munich, Germany), contain multiple artists’ series of illustrations and individual prints depicting scenes from Julie originally intended for other editions. Each thus provides an intricate choreography of visual readings and configures new connections and possibilities for the reader/viewer, while breaking up the traditional relationship between text and image typically found in eighteenth-century illustrated editions. In their very different scale and presentation of prints (number, size, type, arrangement and binding), they suggest highly divergent practices of collecting, displaying and viewing/reading, inclining variously more to the arts of the book and literary culture in one case, or towards print connoisseurship in the other.