Illustration and Adaptation in the Balbussos’ Pride and Prejudice (2013) and The Handmaid’s Tale (2012)

Illustration has a varied life as a mode of adaptation. From frontispieces that concentrate an entire work into a single visual to magazines and editions brimming with illustrations on every page, illustrations contribute to our collective understanding of how a particular work “looks” and of its significance within the cultural landscape. Consistent to all illustrations, though, regardless of number or placement, is the ability to concretize the particulars of a text, to prioritize particular ways of seeing and reading, and to establish and reinforce the visual and thematic symbolism of the novels in which they appear. In this chapter, I explore the ways in which illustrations utilize patterns of visualization established within existing adaptation histories to reinforce modes of seeing a given text, and the ways in which illustrations broaden intertextual networks, specifically by connecting works to broader spheres of texts and meanings. To demonstrate these complementary lines best, I turn to two suites of illustrations created by the twin sister team of Anna and Elena Balbusso for the Folio Society: one for the 2013 edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and the second for the 2012 edition of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. As I argue, the strategies that the Balbussos have adopted in approaching these two very different novels reflect distinct yet related processes of adaptation and visual communication.