The Inspiration Behind The Golden Manuscripts: A Novel
By Evy Journey
Are you ever curious how picture books and, by extension, even graphic novels, first began? Has it ever occurred to you that picture books might have illustrious beginnings?
Like most mothers, I read to my son when he was a boy, and I understand how wonderful children’s picture books can be. Pictures in books are not only entertaining, they also teach.
Today, we take picture books for granted. We love images. We whip out our cell phones and take pictures to preserve memories of instants in time.
I love illustrations in fiction and wish we did more of them. One of my favorites is an old almost tattered copy of a collection of Jane Austen’s novels featuring illustrations of scenes from her stories by a nineteenth century artist. Before Masterpiece Theater and my exposure to films of 19th century England, these images shaped my limited conception of everything that was old English. Now, I have an ebook copy of an old illustrated Jane Austen collection.
When an art history class introduced me to manuscript illuminations, I was amazed at the thought that illustrated books likely have medieval beginnings dating back to Charlemagne’s reign in the 9th century. While he revived classical art, his most lasting achievement is the flourishing of picture bookmaking. Most people in the Middle Ages couldn’t read, so he championed the creation of picture books to teach them about God.
Historians called those early picture books illuminated manuscripts or manuscript illuminations. They were handwritten and illustrated on parchment (dried and stretched animal skins), often by the same creator who painted the pictures.
An illumination is a picture or illustration in a book that conveys the meaning of a piece of text. It’s “illuminated” through the use of gilding—gold or silver decorations on letters and figures. In medieval times, these manuscripts represented a high art form.
This intro compelled me to do extensive research into illuminated manuscripts. One of the articles I unearthed told of an actual theft by an American soldier during WWII of a couple of these rare manuscripts. It was eureka moment. I was left with no choice but to write a story around this theft of illustrated books.
To make the story more intriguing, and in keeping with the overall theme of the second set of standalone novels in my Between Two Worlds series, I chose a young biracial heroine who’s rootless and anxious to find a home for herself. The product is a literary novel based on actual events, into which I’ve woven mystery, historical, and romance elements.
Evy Journey writes. Stories and blog posts. Novels that tend to cross genres. She’s also a wannabe artist, and a flâneuse. Evy studied psychology (M.A., University of Hawaii; Ph.D. University of Illinois). So her fiction spins tales about nuanced characters dealing with contemporary life issues and problems. She believes in love and its many faces. Her one ungranted wish: To live in Paris where art is everywhere and people have honed aimless roaming to an art form. She has visited and stayed a few months at a time.
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