Literary adaptions in comics are not a recent phenomenon, but until recently the cultural status of this kind of work has always been very low, and a certain distrust has dominated the debates for many decades, the main reason of this suspicion being the fear that “fidelity” to the adapted model might jeopardize the proper creative possibilities of the adapting medium. More and more recent examples from the graphic novel field, which aims at becoming a literary practice itself, do not only show that literary adaptations can be very valuable, they also demonstrate that it is possible to use the notion of fidelity itself in highly creative ways. Taking its departure from specific case studies, Olivier Deprez’s adaptation of Kafka’s The Castle (2003), Paul Karasik (script) and David Mazzuchelli’s adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass (2005), Simon Grennan’s adaptation of Anthony Trollope’s John Caldigate (2015), and Sébastien Conard’s adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Watt (2019), this chapter examines the most important techniques that can be used to transfer a novel into a visual narrative in print. It pays particular attention to the visuality of the text as it is transferred from one medium to another (typography, page layout, text as drawing).

Horace Walpole finishes his account of writing The Castle of Otranto (1764) with a wry look at its syntactics, confessing that late one night he “could not hold the pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking, in the middle of a paragraph.” A close look at the beginnings, middles, and ends not only of chapters but also of paragraphs and even sentences in this first gothic novel reveals syntactical passages behaving like subterranean passages. As readers, we often don’t know what’s coming until we turn the corner of the sentence and bump into it. The lack of quotation marks to distinguish dialogue (when quotation marks were entering into common use) repeatedly slides the reader down wrong turns; we mistake one speaker for another. Later editions would insert quotation marks, brightly lighting the syntactic interior. But what Walpole initiates for the gothic on the small level of typography and syntax as well as of atmosphere and plot is precisely the uneasiness of boundaries obscured and identities blurred. This chapter tracks the spatial implications of the shapes of sentences and the peculiarities of paragraphs in The Castle of Otranto to uncover a template of syntactical structures enacting gothic structures.

Chapter 3 focuses on some of the most frequently found historical materials and writing instruments which were used for writing. The chapter begins with a discussion of some of the most ancient materials, including stone and metal, as well as some other perishable materials which were in use among the first civilisations around the world. The discussion then moves on to describe papyrus, parchment, vellum, how they were made and what they were generally used for. The chapter also provides an overview of paper as a source of primary evidence, focusing on some of the key steps in the history of papermaking which can provide useful information for a student of orthography. Moving on, the narrative focuses on a short history of typographic styles, while also providing an overview of how to describe and classify type. The sections on paper and typography are informed by some extensive information already existing in the field of bibliography, while also including elements from palaeography.

In his Autobiography, John Stuart Mill asserts that in 1813 he read ‘the first six dialogues (in the common arrangement) of Plato, from the Euthyphro to the Theaetetus inclusive’ (he was then seven years old; he means the Greek text). What was ‘the common arrangement’? In which edition of the text did Mill encounter it? Indeed, which editions did his father James Mill possess, and which is the one he would have chosen for his son’s introduction to Plato and Platonic Greek? The Thrasyllan arrangement familiar to modern readers from Burnet’s Oxford Text was anything but common or usual in earlier centuries. The only credible candidate is the one pioneered in Serranus’ edition of 1578, printed by Stephanus and then adopted widely, whose pagination has remained the standard Plato reference system. The Stephanus order is found in the complete Bipont Plato edition of 1781-87, whose volumes James Mill gradually acquired. Though it cannot be proved that he possessed in 1813 its opening volumes, containing the dialogues John Stuart read, these are a much likelier choice than the far less readily legible 1602 Frankfurt edition, which he almost certainly owned by that date.

This chapter reveals Sterne theorising his own experimentation with the visual appearance of the novel through images of the hand and handwriting. It measures the extent of Sterne’s innovation with the typographic manicule and his representation of script in print, comparing his innovations with those of Samuel Richardson a decade earlier while identifying the first known instance of printed strikethrough. Sterne inscribed his work with innovative examples of real and fictional handwriting, signing each copy of his novel and commissioning an original woodcut device to create the strikethrough. The chapter explores Sterne’s use of existing print practices or processes of book production in unusual and surprising ways. It establishes Sterne’s position in the print shop and his desire for his works to have specific material attributes, identifying also his anxiety over the potential invasion of his copyright. In revealing the author’s attempts to control every aspect of book production and his engagement with copyright debates, this chapter positions Sterne as a book designer well versed in codices from multiple disciplines and their varied modes of presenting printed data.

This chapter reveals the elaboration of a set of critical priorities, transition prime among them, crystallised by Aaron Hill in the 1730s. Offering what he claimed to be a purified version of pantomime’s techniques for arresting attention, Hill wrote of how actors could become a ‘true FAUSTUS’ for the theatres through transition, creating iconic and dynamic moments of suspension during which they could shift mind and body from one passion to another. Hill’s emphases continue into the time of David Garrick, whose transitions into ‘pensively preparatory attitudes’ were praised as intellectual achievements and blamed as pantomimical tricks. Ultimately, pauses and the transitions that occurred upon them became moments when an actor could be described as asserting their artistic autonomy and the focal point of critical attention. The realisation of Hill’s dreams — a theatre where sophisticated emotion replaced slapstick motion as the key source of spectacle — soon, however, risked becoming a Faustian pact, for an insight into the transitions of a play seemed to demand as much private attention to the page as public engagement with the stage.

This chapter traces the fortunes of Aaron Hill’s English translation (1735) of Voltaire’s tragedy Zaïre (1732), from its first performance under Hill’s direction outside the patent theatres to David Garrick’s reworking of it at Drury Lane. I show that Zara’s scepticism of established religion and her father’s deathbed proselytising are used by Hill to produce what his friend John Dennis called an ‘enthusiastic’ passion and suggest that Voltaire’s work appealed to Hill for its handling of religious material capable of producing extreme sequences of sublime emotions. At the same time, Hill’s Zara is also an exposition of what Hill described as ‘dramatic passions’. Those who read, saw, or performed Zara could witness the outward marks of many passions and trace on stage and on the page their performance through transition to the very instant. Such opportunities made the play perfect for what Hill called an ‘Experiment’ on English tastes and acting. When Garrick came to revive this experiment in the 1750s, its passions become the property of Garrick himself, as he rewrote sections of the play to favour his character of Lusignan.

The Works of J. S, D. D, D. S. P. D., whose first four volumes were published by George Faulkner in Dublin under the date of 1735, was a landmark achievement for the Dublin trade and for Swift in print. These are volumes of considerable expressive force, owing in part to their generous use of frontispieces, ornaments and paratexts. This was the nearest thing to an authorised collected edition to appear in Swift’s lifetime. Although it is rightly regarded as a monument, and a significant step in the consolidation of Swift in print, it is clear from the proposal and the 1735 tranche of volumes that it was a radically – and expressively – compromised one.

This chapter conducts a material and linguistic analysis of royal Tudor proclamations, considering how the properties of the genre inform the performance of power in a text designed to be both spoken and seen. The analysis considers material features, such as layout, oversize initials and typeface, alongside key linguistic properties, including lexical bundles and nominal and pronominal references to monarch and subject. The findings are compared against the those for royal correspondence. The chapter proposes that proclamations underwent a process of epistolarization in the Tudor period, becoming more interactive and directly representative of the monarch's prerogative.