Another World: Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Print Culture #[nn]

This handsome 2017 Yale University Press volume explores the rich visual world of nineteenth-century illustrated print culture, and its cover — by Grandville — sets the tone beautifully. The image presents a colorful procession of costumed figures, including a robed monk drinking from a vessel, a woman in a sweeping blue dress, a jester in purple, and several other theatrically dressed characters, all casting dramatically distorted shadows that suggest something wonderfully strange lurking behind the ordinary. Presented as a mirror-image pair — the same scene reflected above and below the title — the design is playful and quietly unsettling, a fitting introduction to author Patricia Mainardi's deep dive into the fantastical imagination of an era.