Illustrating Jim in 1947

COLOR ILLUSTRATION FOR 1947 HUCK FINN

  In 1947 the World Publishing Company brought out an illustrated edition of Huckleberry Finn in its Rainbow Classics series, which published a Tom Sawyer the same year and would publish a Prince and the Pauper a year later. The illustrations for Huck were drawn by Baldwin Hawes, who according to the introduction to the volume was the grandson of George Washington Cable, MT's partner on the 1884-1884 tour to publicize the first edition of the novel.
  The Rainbow Classics edition featured 8 full-page water colors, two of which included Jim, and 58 black-and-white drawings: one at the head of every chapter and 14 additional full-page drawings; altogether Jim appears in 20 of these drawings. The color plate at left appears in Chapter 25, which describes the King and the Duke's arrival at the Wilkses' -- one of the "off-the-river" episodes in which Jim does not appear. He is there in Hawes' painting, however, as you can see by clicking on it. Hawes' textual source is in Chapter 19, where Huck describes how he and Jim "used to lay on our backs and look up at the stars." It is not easy to see the black man beside the white boy in Hawes' representation, but it should be noted that, other than Kemble's illustration of Jim and Huck sleeping next to each other on shore, this is the only visual depiction of this part of the story in any illustrated edition. That can also be said of Hawes' drawing on page 162 of the pair swimming in the river, though as Huck says in the text "we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us." You can see that picture, and the way Jim appears in the other 19 drawings, by clicking on any of the images below.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, With Illustrations by Baldwin Hawes; Introduction by May Lamberton Becker. Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1947. Courtesy John Unsworth.



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