To the Role of Illustrations in the "slim" entertaining journals of the border of XIX-XX centuries

Abstract

The following article is dedicated to the role of the illustrations that were used in Russian "slim" entertainment journals, such as "Stolitsa i usad'ba" (“Capital and Manor”), "Azart" (“Hazard”) and "Rebus".
Slim journals in this article are analyzed in order to find and describe their typological features and special aspects of their content and visual dressing, that were common for the magazines on the boundary of XIX and XX century in Russian Empire. The aims of these kind of journals were commercial success, orientation to the general, not well educated reader, denial of social topics, as well as plain speak and big amount of illustrations, that followed every article and could get up to 50% of all space of the journal. The author describes, that illustrations had not only entertaining, but also ideological role and even were used to re-shape the image of the journal for the audience, as it happened with the journal “Rebus”, started as a Sunday journal with family puzzles and then evolved to the journal about Spiritism and mysterious events.