Most of us picture a novelist at a desk with a pen and a pile of pages. A few of the greats also kept a sketchbook nearby. They drew the maps, the characters and sometimes whole scenes themselves.
The results range from polished watercolors to scrappy marker doodles. Here are seven novels where the person who wrote the words also made the pictures.
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground by Lewis Carroll
Most readers know Alice through John Tenniel’s drawings in the 1865 published edition. Before that, Charles Dodgson, who wrote as Lewis Carroll, made a handwritten version with his own pictures. He gave it to Alice Liddell as a gift in 1864.
The manuscript includes thirty seven illustrations, drawn in a slightly stiff, amateur hand that has its own charm. It is now held by the British Library. A facsimile edition came out in 1886, so the public could see the author’s own version.
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Thackeray once hoped to make his living as an artist, and he studied drawing in Paris before turning to writing. When Vanity Fair appeared in monthly installments in 1847 and 1848, he supplied the etchings and the woodcut illustrations himself.
The drawings are caricature in spirit, which suits the book’s satire. Becky Sharp and the people around her look as sharp and a little ridiculous on the page as they do in the prose. Reading the novel with these images gives a better sense of how Thackeray meant it to be seen.
Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray
Thackeray didn’t stop after Vanity Fair. His next major novel, The History of Pendennis, ran in monthly parts from 1848 to 1850, again with illustrations by the author.
The drawings cover the book’s world of young ambition, literary London and social climbing. Thackeray’s looser style works well for the quick comic scenes. Together with Vanity Fair, it shows how central drawing was to his storytelling during these years.
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson’s contribution to Treasure Island is a single image, but it may be the most influential one in adventure fiction. In 1881 he drew a map of an imaginary island while on holiday with his family, and the story grew from it. He later said the map helped him shape the plot.
The novel was serialized in Young Folks before it appeared as a book in 1883. The original map was lost in the post to the publisher, so Stevenson had to redraw it from memory. That redrawn version is the one readers know, with its coastline, hills and anchorages.
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
When The Hobbit appeared in 1937, it carried Tolkien’s own drawings, maps and jacket design. Thror’s Map, with its runes and dragon marks, sets up the whole quest, and the Wilderland map helps readers follow the journey.
Tolkien also painted and drew scenes such as Hobbiton, Mirkwood and Smaug in his lair. They are simple, careful pictures from a writer who clearly saw his world before he described it. The Bodleian Library’s 2018 exhibition on Tolkien showed many of these original artworks.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Little Prince first appeared in 1943, published in New York in both English and French. The watercolor illustrations were painted by Saint-Exupéry himself. The boy on his tiny planet, the fox and the snake are all his own creations.
The pictures are loose and gentle, and the book wouldn’t feel the same without them. The original manuscript and drawings are held by the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. For many readers, the images are as memorable as the story.
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut’s 1973 novel is full of his own drawings, made in a deliberately plain, childlike line. They show everyday objects and symbols, and they work as running jokes, as though the narrator were explaining the world to a visitor from somewhere else.
Vonnegut studied and enjoyed drawing, and visual art became a larger part of his later life. In this book the sketches add to the strange, deadpan humor of the narration. The novel is a modern case of an author using pictures as part of the voice.
