Art training and illustrated publishing
Paul studied at South Kensington School of Art and developed a career in illustrated publishing. Her sustained work with George Harrap joined the revival of manuscript illumination to commercial book production. She contributed to editions of Dante and medieval romance, using pictures, borders and lettering to organise a reader’s encounter with the text.
Her 1916 New Life of Dante, based on Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s translation, combined printed typography with elements recalling an illuminated manuscript. The pictures also drew on Rossetti’s painted figures and compositions. That relationship makes her work more than the addition of separate illustrations: page design itself becomes a means of interpreting a literary work.
An English illustrated collection of Japanese legends
The 1912 Myths and Legends of Japan names Davis as author and credits Paul with thirty-two full-page pictures. Davis acknowledges earlier writers in assembling the prose. Her illustrations add another interpretive layer, choosing a moment, grouping figures and setting the action within a composed environment.
The Lovers who exchanged Fans places its pair within a wooded waterside scene. Their patterned clothing and restrained gestures give an encounter visual form before its full narrative is known. The image belongs to Paul’s presentation of the story, not to an unchanging or universal Japanese view of it. Across the book, the relationship between caption, still image and surrounding prose gives her contribution its particular character.
