Relations Between Description and Illustration as an Editorial Problem

A b s t r a c t

This article attempts to answer the following question: is there a connection between description and illustration in a literary text? We ask this question from the perspective of the editor who has to publish a literary work and therefore must decide whether to include illustrations or not. We refer to the illustrated editions of works by, among others, Stanisław Lem, Eliza Orzeszkowa and Adam Mickiewicz and demonstrate that the decision to illustrate (or not) was motivated by many different factors – aesthetic, patriotic, didactic, technological and economical.