Children's Books and Their Illustrators

by Gleeson White

To the artists named as representative of this period one must not forget to add Mr. Birket Foster, who devoted many of his felicitous studies of English pastoral life to the adornment of children's books. But speaking broadly of the period from the Queen's Accession to 1865, except that the subjects are of a sort supposed to appeal to young minds, their conception differs in no way from the work of the same artists in ordinary literature. The vignettes of scenery have childish instead of grown-up figures in the foregrounds; the historical or legendary figures are as seriously depicted in the one class of books as in the other. Humour is conspicuous by its absence—or, to be more accurate, the humour is more often in the accompanying anecdote than in the picture. Probably if the authorship of hundreds of the illustrations of "Peter Parley's Annuals" and other books of this period could be traced, artists as famous as Charles Keene might be found to have contributed. But, owing to the mediocre wood-engraving employed, or to the poor printing, the pictures are singularly unattractive. As a rule, they are unsigned and appear to be often mere pot-boilers—some no doubt intentionally disowned by the designer—others the work of 'prentice hands who afterwards became famous. Above all they are, essentially, illustrations to children's books only because they chanced to be printed therein, and have sometimes done duty in "grown-up" books first. Hence, whatever their artistic merits, they do not appeal to a student of our present subject. They are accidentally present in books for children, but essentially they belong to ordinary illustrations.

Indeed, speaking generally, the time between "Felix Summerley" and Walter Crane, which saw two Great Exhibitions and witnessed many advances in popular illustration, was too much occupied with catering for adults to be specially interested in juveniles. Hence, notwithstanding the names of "illustrious illustrators" to be found on their title-pages, no great injustice will be done if we leave this period and pass on to that which succeeded it. For the Great Exhibition fostered the idea that a smattering of knowledge of a thousand and one subjects was good. Hence the chastened gaiety of its mildly technical science, its popular manuals by Dr. Dionysius Lardner, and its return in another form to the earlier ideal that amusement should be combined with instruction. All sorts of attempts were initiated to make Astronomy palatable to babies, Botany an amusing game for children, Conchology a parlour pastime, and so on through the alphabet of sciences down to Zoology, which is never out of favour with little ones, even if its pictures be accompanied by a dull encylopædia of fact.

ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE WHITE SWANS" BY ALICE HAVERS (By permission of Mr. Albert Hildesheimer)

Therefore, except so far as the work of certain illustrators, hereafter noticed, touches this period, we may leave it; not because it is unworthy of most serious attention, for in Sir John Gilbert, Birket Foster, Harrison Weir, and the rest, we have men to reckon with whenever a chronicle of English illustration is in question, but only because they did not often feel disposed to make their work merely amusing. In saying this it is not suggested that they should have tried to be always humorous or archaic, still less to bring down their talent to the supposed level of a child; but only to record the fact that they did not. For instance, Sir John Gilbert's spirited compositions to a "Boy's Book of Ballads" (Bell and Daldy) as you see them mixed with other of the master's work in the reference scrap-books of the publishers, do not at once separate themselves from the rest as "juvenile" pictures.

Nor as we approach the year 1855 (of the "Music Master"), and 1857 (when the famous edition of Tennyson's Poems began a series of superbly illustrated books), do we find any immediate change in the illustration of children's books. The solitary example of Sir Edward Burne-Jones's efforts in this direction, in the frontispiece and title-page to Maclaren's "The Fairy Family" (Longmans, 1857), does not affect this statement. But soon after, as the school of Walker and Pinwell became popular, there is a change in books of all sorts, and Millais and Arthur Hughes, two of the three illustrators of the notable "Music Master," come into our list of children's artists. At this point the attempt to weave a chronicle of children's books somewhat in the date of their publication must give way to a desultory notice of the most prominent illustrators. For we have come to the beginning of to-day rather than the end of yesterday, and can regard the "sixties" onwards as part of the present.

ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE RED FAIRY BOOK." BY LANCELOT SPEED (LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.)

It is true that the Millais of the wonderful designs to "The Parables" more often drew pictures of children than of children's pet themes, but all the same they are entirely lovable, and appeal equally to children of all ages. But his work in this field is scanty; nearly all will be found in "Little Songs for me to Sing" (Cassell), or in "Lilliput Levee" (1867), and these latter had appeared previously in Good Words. Of Arthur Hughes's work we will speak later.

Another artist whose work bulks large in our subject—Arthur Boyd Houghton—soon appears in sight, and whether he depicted babies at play as in "Home Thoughts and Home Scenes," a book of thirty-five pictures of little people, or imagined the scenes of stories dear to them in "The Arabian Nights," or books like "Ernie Elton" or "The Boy Pilgrims," written especially for them, in each he succeeded in winning their hearts, as every one must admit who chanced in childhood to possess his work. So much has been printed lately of the artist and his work, that here a bare reference will suffice.