The Victorian Fairy Tale Book (The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library)

by Michael Patrick Hearn (Editor)

  GEORGE CRUIKSHANK (1792–1878) was the greatest of England’s nineteenth-century comic artists. He made his reputation with his pictures for Edgar Taylor’s translation of the Grimms’ German Popular Stories (1823 and 1826) and went on to illustrate Charles Dickens’ Sketches by Boz (1836) and Oliver Twist (1838) among countless other books. His later work, such as his Fairy Library (1854 and 1864), was marred by temperance propaganda.

  MARY DE MORGAN (1850–1907) knew the Pre-Raphaelites through her brother William De Morgan, the artist and author. She wrote several exceptional collections of fairy tales: On a Pincushion and Other Fairy Tales (1877), The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde and Other Stories (1880), and The Windfairies and Other Tales (1900).

  CHARLES DICKENS (1812–1870) was the pre-eminent novelist of the Victorian Age. The Pickwick Papers (1838), Oliver Twist (1838), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), and all his other books were as avidly read by children as by their parents. His only works written specifically for a juvenile audience were A Child’s History of England (1852–1854) and Holiday Romance, first serialized in the American magazine Our Young Folks and Dickens’ own journal All the Year Round in 1868.

  RICHARD DOYLE (1824–1883) was one of the most popular comic artists of his day. He contributed to Punch and illustrated many books, including William Makepeace Thackeray’s Rebecca and Rowena (1850) and The Newcomes (1855), The Story of Jack and the Giants (1851), and John Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River (1851). His most ambitious effort was his suite of color wood engravings In Fairyland (1870), accompanied by verses by William Allingham.

  FORD MADOX FORD (1873–1939), whose real name was Ford Hermann Hueffer, is best known as the author of the modern novel The Good Soldier (1915) and as the founder of the Transatlantic Review, but his earliest works were children’s stories: The Brown Owl (1892), The Feather (1893), and The Queen Who Flew (1894).

  SIR JOHN GILBERT (1817–1897) was a prolific illustrator, the first major artist to contribute to the Illustrated London News. His numerous books range from The Illustrated Webster Spelling Book (1856) to Mme. D’Aulnoy’s Fairy Tales (1855).

  KENNETH GRAHAME (1859–1932) was employed by the Bank of England (later as its secretary) and in his spare time wrote the charming books The Golden Age (1895), Dream Days (1898), and The Wind in the Willows (1908).

  LAURENCE HOUSMAN (1865–1959), brother of the poet A. E. Housman, was an exceptional author and illustrator. Besides embellishing his own fairy tales with his exquisite pictures, he illustrated Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1893), E. Nesbit’s A Pomander of Verses (1895), and George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin (1900). His most famous work of literature was the play Victoria Regina (1934).

  ARTHUR HUGHES (1832–1915) was the member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who most diligently pursued book illustration as a profession. Besides George MacDonald’s fairy tales, the books he illustrated include William Allingham’s The Music Master (1855), Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1869), and Christina Rossetti’s Speaking Likenesses (1874) and Sing-Song (1872).

  GEORGE MACDONALD (1824–1905) was ordained as a Congregationalist minister, but quickly lost his pulpit due to his liberal religious beliefs. He devoted the remainder of his life to writing, reflecting on spiritual matters in works of fantasy, such as Phantasies (1858), Dealings with the Fairies (1867), At the Back of the North Wind (1871), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), The Princess and Curdie (1883), and Lilith (1895).

  HAROLD ROBERT MILLAR (1869–1942) flourished between 1890 and 1935 as a magazine illustrator, primarily for the Strand. Many of E. Nesbit’s stories first appeared in the Strand with his pictures.

  HENRY MORLEY (1822–1894) became an editor of Household Words at Charles Dickens’ request. He was also a distinguished literary scholar and wrote two collections of children’s stories, Fables and Fairy Tales (1860) and Oberon’s Horn (1861).

  “E. NESBIT” (1858–1924) was Edith Nesbit Bland, a prominent Fabian Socialist whose friends included George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and G. K. Chesterton. She also wrote many fine children’s books, including The Book of Dragons (1900), The Railway Children (1906), the Bastable books, and the Five Children trilogy.

  MAXFIELD PARRISH (1870–1966) was one of the premier American illustrators of the early twentieth century. After his first book, L. Frank Baum’s Mother Goose in Prose (1897), was published in England, he was commissioned to illustrate Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age (1899) and Dream Days (1902).

  ARTHUR RACKHAM (1867–1939) was the outstanding British book illustrator of his generation. He produced many lavish gift books, including J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1907), Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1915), John Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River (1932), Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1933), Robert Browning’s The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1934), and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1940).

  JOHN MCL. RALSTON was active as a watercolorist and a contributor to the Illustrated London News between 1872 and 1881. Besides Dinah M. Mulock Craik’s The Little Lame Prince and His Travelling-Cloak (1875), the books he illustrated include Charles Dickens’ A Child’s History of England (1873) and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1880).

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830–1894), the sister of the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the art critic William Michael Rossetti, was a distinguished poet in her own right. Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) is her most important book, but she also wrote a collection of children’s verse, Sing-Song (1872), and an imitation of Alice in Wonderland, Speaking Likenesses (1874), both illustrated by Arthur Hughes.

  DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828–1882) founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. He was as gifted a poet as he was a painter. He contributed illustrations to several books, including William Allingham’s The Music Master (1855) and his sister Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1862) and The Prince’s Progress (1866).

  JOHN RUSSIN (1819–1900) became one of the most revered art and social critics of his day with the publication of his first book Modern Painters (1843). His only published work of fiction was the children’s story The King of the Golden River (1851).

  WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811–1863) was a cartoonist as well as one of the most important novelists of the Victorian Age. His works include The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), Vanity Fair (1847), Rebecca and Rowena (1850), and The Newcomes (1855), as well as a series of “Christmas Books” in imitation of Charles Dickens, the most famous being The Rose and the Ring (1855).

  OSCAR WILDE (1854–1900) was one of the most flamboyant literary figures of the late nineteenth century. His reputation rests on a wide variety of writing, including his collections of fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1889) and The House of Pomegranates (1891), the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), his plays Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), and the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898).

  WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865–1939), perhaps the greatest modern poet in English, was a prominent member of the Irish revival called “the Celtic Twilight” after his book of 1893. Besides writing many exquisite poems based upon his native folklore, such as those in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), he collected several volumes of Irish fairy tales and legends.

  The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

  AFRICAN FOLKTALES by Roger D. Abrahams 0–394–72117–9

  AFRICAN AMERICAN FOLKTALES by Roger D. Abrahams 0–375–70539–2

  AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz 0–394–74018–1

  CHINESE FAIRY TALES AND FANTASIES by Moss Roberts 0–394–73994–9

  THE COMPLETE GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES

  by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm 0–394–70930–6

  FAVORITE FOLKTALES FROM AR
OUND THE WORLD by Jane Yolen 0–394–75188–4

  FOLKTALES FROM INDIA by A.K. Ramanujan 0–679–74832–6

  GODS AND HEROES OF ANCIENT GREECE by Gustav Schwab 0–375–71446–4

  IRISH FOLKTALES by Henry Glassie 0–679–77412–2

  JAPANESE TALES by Royall Tyler 0–375–71451–0

  LATIN AMERICAN FOLKTALES by John Bierhorst 0–375–42066–5

  LEGENDS AND TALES OF THE AMERICAN WEST by Richard Erdoes 0–375–70266–0

  THE HORSE MYTHS by Kevin Crossley-Holland 0–394–74846–8

  NORWEGIAN FOLK TALES by Peter Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe 0–394–71054–1

  RUSSIAN FAIRY TALES by Aleksandr Afanas’ev 0–394–73090–9

  THE VICTORIAN FAIRY TALE BOOK by Michael Patrick Hearn 0–375–71455–3

  About the Editor

  MICHAEL PATRICK HEARN is America’s foremost man of letters specializing in children’s literature and its illustration. The author of The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, The Annnotated Wizard of Oz, The Annotated Christmas Carol, and The Art of the Broadway Poster, and the editor of The Andrew Lang Fairy Tale Book, he has also provided introductions to such classics as At the Back of the North Wind, Peter and Wendy, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, and Little Wizard Stories of Oz. His articles have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, the Nation, Graphis, American Artist, the Ladies’ Home Journal, and other publications. He is also the author of an original fairy tale, The Porcelain Cat, with illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon.

  Michael Patrick Hearn teaches the history of children’s book illustration at Columbia University. He is currently writing Classics Reconsidered, a study of the masterworks of juvenile literature, as well as a biography of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz.