Luka Jantjie: A Publisher’s View of a Highly Illustrated Historical Biography

Abstract

In the course of publishing Kevin Shillington’s biography of Luka Jantjie (c.1835-1897), I became fascinated by the wealth of images available to illustrate Luka’s life and times. These images created a number of opportunities to support the text in telling the story, but they also raised important issues about selection and about how images should be used in the book. In order to examine these issues this< paper first outlines the story as it presented itself for illustration, and then discusses the development of the work as an illustrated biography.