Art - Fairy & Folk Tales Illustration

I have quite a few large format books on fairy & folk tales. Some are collections , like World Tales, which is actually very interesting in the selection of the tales and in the illustrations that accompany each tale, executed by different artists. The below illustration is by Sue Porter for Tales of A Parrot - a fairy tale from India.

Another collection of various fairy stories illustrated by the master Arthur Rackham.

A book on the life and art of Arthur Rackham

Next a collection of Victorian Fairy Tales and Swedish Fairy Tales illustrated by John Bauer.

Moonlight & Fairyland is a beautiful edition of fairy tales written by Laurence Housman.

Snow White translated by Randall Jarrell & delicately illustrated by Ekholm Burket and a book on the graphic illustrations of Walter Crane.

The following book is a sort of large chapbook edition of Beauty & The Beast illustrated by Michael Hague. Below is the front page with accompanying illustration. The high resolution pictures are tipped in adding class to what is really a very lovely book.

And finally, a collection of stories by Alan Garner about fools called The Guizer - A Book of Fools. This book for some reason reminds me of Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker - it has that same primitive strangeness about it.

I've always been taken with the epigraph to the book - words spoken by the Eskimo Anarulunguaq, when he stood on the roof of a skyscraper overlooking New York.

"I see things more than my mind can grasp; and the only way to save oneself from madness is to suppose that we have all died suddenly before we knew, and that this is part of another life"

Coming next - pop culture.

More Fairy Tales

Well, I told you that I have a vast number of fairy tale collections, so here are some more.

First up The Classic Fairy Tales by Iona & Peter Opie who were folklorists, and according to the Wikipedia entry on them, had the richest collection of children's literature in the world.

The interesting thing about this book is the illustrations. They do not content themselves with just one, to illustrate the story, they have several interpretative pictures for each of the well known fairy stories in this collection.

Below are some of the illustrations from the book.

First is one of those weird reversible head pictures purporting to be Cinderella & the Fairy Godmother drawn by Rex Whistler. I present both sides so you don't have to turn your monitor upside down to see the effect.

Cinderella	The Fairy Godmother

The next picture is by John Austen and is an elegant 1922 illustration for Bluebeard.

This collection of Russian Fairy Tales I remember buying when I was working at a science fiction bookshop in the 1970s. One of the guys who worked there practically sent the place broke ordering in lavish art books and other rarities like this collection. He was of Russian descent and dressed in black - looked rather like a portly vampire in fact. One of the stories in this collection goes by the rather gross title of The Snotty Goat.

Another couple of oddities that fit within the fairy tale category are these two.

The George Macdonald book is one of two volumes and was published by WMB Eerdmans in 1973. It is a collection of George MacDonald's fairy tales. George MacDonald is well known as the author of Lilith and Phantastes which were both published in the fabulous Ballantine Fantasy Series, which I will get to later down the track. Yes, you guessed it, I have a very good collection of them as well.

Hobgoblin & Sweet Puck is described by the author as "another collection of useless information, but pleasantly beguiling, I hope" and is a sort of scholarly investigation into all things faerie in name and, obviously, nature.

Fairy Tales

Over the years I seem to have accumulated a large collection of fairy and folk tales.

I have loved fairy stories since I was a child.

It was interesting to discover in adulthood the darker side to fairytales, but I’m sure I fell in love with them originally because they were so weird and otherworldly. One story I recall most vividly involved magic walnuts which when cracked open revealed splendid gowns and other glamorous accoutrements. Another favourite, The Goose Girl, features the talking head of a slain horse over an archway which dispenses advice to the ill treated heroine. I can’t remember what the first story was called, but no doubt it’s in one or other of books in my collection.

So I have complete collections of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Perrault and all the Dover coloured Fairy Books (see above)

I bought some for their wonderful illustrations, for instance The Perrault Tales are illustrated by Heath Robinson, famous for his drawings of eccentric machines, but also a famous children’s book illustrator like his brother Charles Robinson.

Puss in Boots	The Friendly Frog

There will be more on Heath Robinson later, when I get to the art books on my shelves.