Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

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Tony Summerfield
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Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Tony Summerfield »

Plenty of posts recently have considered Betty Maxey illustrations to be the best thing since sliced bread, so I thought I would go forward a bit and take a quick look at Jolyne Knox with her Five on a Treasure Island illustrations. Humming a well known song by Dolly Parton I did some quick scans - is she so much worse than Betty Maxey to the unbiased viewer? Hodder obviously didn't think so as she was commissioned to illustrate the books in 1979 - just five years after Betty Maxey produced her illustrations.
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Thanks for posting them, Tony, but I don't like them much. They look "fluffy" and "bitty" to me (too many dark patches/lines) and the children's faces are blank and wooden. The arrangement of the third picture is quite attractive but the island looks too dark and brooding, the clouds are rather overpowering and once again the children's faces are lifeless.
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Moonraker »

Hmm, not sure about this. I would say they are slightly better than Maxey's, but not by much. The people look rather like zombies and Kirrin Island looks like a child's sandcastle on a rock.
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by sixret »

Definitely better than Betty Maxey's. Maxey's illustrations are not drawing, they are sketching. Knox's ones are drawing though not as good as Soper's. But prefer the cutie types of illustrations by Wheeler, Cloke, McGavin and Van Der Beek. :D
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Lucky Star »

They do have a very different feel to them than either Soper or Maxey's work but I do actually like them. Particularly the first and third ones anyway. The one of them in the boat/water looks a bit out of proportion to me. But I think thery are more interesting to look at than Maxey's though they lack the classic elegance of Soper's. Thanks for showing them Tony. As I own no copies of books with her illustrations in them I had not seen them before.
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by John Pickup »

I'd not seen these before either. I like the first one but the others not so much. Kirrin Island looks like a rock formation at the edge of the beach with the water behind it. Nothing to trouble you here, Eileen.
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

I don't dislike the illustrations, but the faces are a bit bland, but they are an improvement on Betty Maxey's.

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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Spitfire »

I hadn't seen these before either. I agree with comments that the children look rather expressionless. I don't mind the other aspects of the drawings, and I think Kirrin Island isn't too badly depicted (though it looks rather like a heap of rocks). I much prefer Betty Maxey, she manages to get expression across so much better.
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by walter raleigh »

Tony Summerfield wrote:Plenty of posts recently have considered Betty Maxey illustrations to be the best thing since sliced bread, so I thought I would go forward a bit and take a quick look at Jolyne Knox with her Five on a Treasure Island illustrations. Humming a well known song by Dolly Parton I did some quick scans - is she so much worse than Betty Maxey to the unbiased viewer? Hodder obviously didn't think so as she was commissioned to illustrate the books in 1979 - just five years after Betty Maxey produced her illustrations.
As you well know Tony, Betty Maxey's first 'Famous Five' Illustrations appeared in 1968, and continued (in the paperbacks at least) right up until the 1990's, so I'm guessing your comment about "just five years" is a little tongue in cheek - especially given the exchange you had here with Dr. Stephen Isabirye, regarding his now legendary tome "The Famous Five: A Personal Anecdotage":
Tony Summerfield wrote:
Enikyoga wrote:Eforts to replace The Famous Five illustrations with those of Betty Maxey proved to be a miserable flop, thus enabling the comeback of the Eileen Soper illustrations in the Enid Blyton birth centennial editions of 1997
As the Betty Maxey illustrations were used for over twenty years I don't think you can call them a 'miserable flop', Stephen.
I do think Jolyne Knox's illustrations are perfectly servicable, and I do quite like her style but her depictions of the children I'm not so taken with. They seem a little too young to me, except for Anne who in these pictures appears to be the oldest looking of the four. I'm also not fond of her depiction of Timmy who it looks like she drew to resemble the dog from the first TV series - give me Betty Maxey, or even Eileen Soper any day.

Thanks for posting them though, as I'd not seen any of them before either. Although looking at them again, I do wonder if Jolyne Knox might be the mysterious artist responsible for the early eighties paperback covers?

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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Kate Mary »

Until I retired recently I worked in public libraries so I am familiar with all the editions published over the last forty years. I quite like the Jolyene Knox illustrations and prefer them to the Betty Maxey ones, but I think that one's preference are for the pictures one grew up with so for me it's Eileen Soper.
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Courtenay »

Hmmm, these don't grab me, I'm afraid. They're not completely horrible, but they're not particularly good either. I agree with others here that the children aren't very well portrayed, especially their faces. There's more detail and more shading than in most Maxey illustrations, but at least Maxey usually manages to give the characters some, well, character, and her work has made a considerable impression on those of us who grew up with it, even if we do now prefer Soper. I can't imagine Knox's style making a great impression on anyone, even on young children reading the books for the first time.

By the way, Nigel, did you notice the rather bizarre portrayal of George kissing (or biting?) Timmy smack on the mouth?? :D

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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by number 6 »

Bland, dull & uninspiring! Definitely not my idea of delivering excitement to the reader! :?
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Moonraker »

By the way, Nigel, did you notice the rather bizarre portrayal of George kissing (or biting?) Timmy smack on the mouth??
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Tony Summerfield »

I take your point, Walter, that the date 1974 is the Hodder copyright date for all the Maxey illustrations, though I realise some were done before this, but I believe that others may have been appearing for the first time on this date. I also realise that Maxey illustrations continued beyond 1979 as even when a cover of a paperback was changed the internal book remained exactly as it was. However, any new publication from 1979 onwards used the Jolyne Knox illustrations and not the Betty Maxey ones.

I have said before that it is entirely logical that readers are likely to prefer the illustrations that they first saw as a child which is why the Maxey ones are so popular. The same thing applies to the TV serials as well, which is why the 70s series remains the favourite with so many, but as a neutral observer I would have said that the 90s series was superior in every way.

I am also of course in the unusual position of not having seen any of these illustrators as a child, so I am not looking at them through rose coloured specs! I have put below two illustrations of Quentin which depict exactly the same scene and I know which one I think is the better illustration.
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Re: Jolyne Knox illustrations (Famous Five)

Post by Jack400 »

The one on the right works best for me. The one on the left looks like he's recovering from an appearance on Top of the Pops in the 1970's.
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