The Goncourt Brothers and the Language of Etching: Prints, Process, Prose

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Rachel Skokowski (Curator, Janet Turner Print Museum and Director of Galleries, California State University)

The Goncourt Brothers and the Language of Etching

Prints, Process, Prose

Rachel Skokowski (Curator, Janet Turner Print Museum and Director of Galleries, California State University)

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English

Oxford University Press
27 November 2025

History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900; Prints & printmaking; Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 ; Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers

Series: Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs

The Goncourt Brothers and the Language of Etching reassesses Edmond and Jules de Goncourts' work as both authors and etchers, arguing that their firsthand experience with printmaking fundamentally shaped their prose. Known as novelists, diarists, art historians, and collectors, the Goncourt brothers were also printmakers, producing nearly 100 etchings from 1859 until Jules' untimely death in 1870. Over the same decade, the brothers were active participants in the French etching revival, a movement that brought together artists and writers to promote etching as a cutting-edge print medium and theorize printmaking in new ways. Using an interdisciplinary approach that centers the embodied process of both etching and writing, this book identifies new intersections between word and image in the Goncourts' wide-ranging work. From the brothers' etched illustrations for their groundbreaking history of eighteenth-century French art, to their efforts to translate techniques from printmaking into their experimental prose in their novels, each chapter offers a close analysis of the Goncourts' texts and prints. This book not only brings critical attention to the brothers' understudied work as printmakers, but also provides new insight into larger issues in nineteenth-century France, including debates on the purpose and value of creative labor and pressing questions about reproduction, imitation, and originality in art. Ultimately, this work opens further avenues within studies of literature and the visual arts, illuminating the significant and often surprising links between printmaking and writing.

By: Rachel Skokowski (Curator Janet Turner Print Museum and Director of Galleries California State University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780198975274
ISBN 10: 0198975279
Series: Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 27 November 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction 1: Creative Copies: Etching and Originality in L'Art du XVIIIe siècle 2: Manette Salomon: Monkeys and Mechanical Arts 3: The Needle and the Pen: Etching and écriture artiste 4: Etched in Memory: Afterlives and Artistic Reputation

Rachel Skokowski is the Curator of the Janet Turner Print Museum and Director of Galleries at California State University, Chico. She received a DPhil and MSt in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a BA in French from Princeton University. Skokowski has held positions at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the University of Sydney and is an Officer in the Association of Print Scholars. Her research has been published in the Australian Journal of French Studies, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, and Les Études rétiviennes.