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Illustrations “More Numerous Than We Could Have Expected”: Biography as “Mixed Media” in William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (1885–1889)

From the book Intermediality, Life Writing, and American Studies

  • Hélène Quanquin

Abstract

The four volumes of William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, the biography of the American abolitionist leader written by his two sons and published in 1885 and 1889 include numerous illustrations, mostly portraits made by wood-engraver Gustav Kruell. The use of “mixed media” (Higgins 2001 [1965]: 52) in this biography is not meant only to complement, but also to interact with the text in order to draw a more accurate picture of Garrison’s life and work as well as of the authors’ own roles as guardians of their father’s legacy. The analysis of the portraits published in the biography and of the intentions of the two authors, however, shows that the intermediality of the project revealed as much as it obscured. The story of intermediality in William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879 is a story of omissions as much as it is a story of revelations.

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
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