Grandville’s Book Illustrations

Grandville’s talents came to the attention of important Parisian political and satirical journals, where the artist eventually made many contributions as an illustrator. Later, as censorship, arrests, and government shutdowns of these journals increased, Grandville looked toward book illustration to provide a more universal message on political and social issues. He illustrated the French editions of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, and Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. His edition of The Fables by Jean de La Fontaine, which combines Grandville’s talent as a caricaturist with La Fontaine’s satirical anthropomorphic tales, was reissued many times in the 19th-century.