ABSTRACT This article examines the role of illustration at the Saturday Evening Post during the 1920s when the magazine had its largest audiences and, by extension, its greatest cultural impact. Using several examples from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prolific career as a Post writer and the work of several illustrious illustrators, celebrities in their own right, who produced visual interpretations of his stories (Arthur William Brown, May Wilson Preston, and Henry Raleigh), this article reveals the autonomy illustrators had from authorial, and often editorial, intervention, and the active role they played in shaping readers’ experiences. Far from being subservient to the written text, illustration was integral for readers of illustrated magazines in this period, and it is more accurate to view the visual and textual as a single composite text, experienced simultaneously. Scholars have recognized the role that fiction played in the image of America being disseminated by the Post to tens of millions of Americans weekly in this period. However, this role cannot be fully understood without considering these works alongside the visual representations provided by these influential, yet now largely overlooked, artists.
J. Bennett Nolan (Fri,) studied this question.