| ILLUSTRATION FROM "SINBAD THE SAILOR" BY WILLIAM STRANG (LAWRENCE AND BULLEN. 1896) | ILLUSTRATION FROM "ALI BABA" BY J. B. CLARK (LAWRENCE AND BULLEN. 1896) |
It is strange that Mr. Heywood Sumner, who, as his notable "Fitzroy Pictures" would alone suffice to prove, is peculiarly well equipped for the illustration of children's books, has done but few, and of these none are in colour. "Cinderella" (1882), rhymes by H. S. Leigh, set to music by J. Farmer, contains very pleasant decoration by Mr. Sumner. Next comes "Sintram" (1883), a notable edition of De la Motte Fouqué's romance, followed by "Undine" (in 1885). With a book on the "Parables," by A.L.O.E., published about 1884; "The Besom Maker" (1880), a volume of country ditties with the old music, and "Jacob and the Raven," with thirty-nine illustrations (Allen, 1896), the best example of his later manner, and a book which all admirers of the more severe order of "decorative illustration" will do well to preserve, the list is complete. Whether a certain austerity of line has made publishers timid, or whether the artist has declined commissions, the fact remains that the literature of the nursery has not yet had its full share from Mr. Heywood Sumner. Luckily, if its shelves are the less full, its walls are gayer by the many Fitzroy pictures he has made so effectively, which readers of The Studio have seen reproduced from time to time in these pages.
Mr. H. J. Ford's work occupies so much space in the library of a modern child, that it seems less necessary to discuss it at length here, for he is found either alone or co-operating with Mr. Jacomb Hood and Mr. Lancelot Speed, in each of the nine volumes of fairy tales and true stories (Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Pink, and the rest), edited by Mr. Andrew Lang, and published by Longmans. More than that, at the Fine Art Society in May 1895, Mr. Ford exhibited seventy-one original drawings, chiefly those for the "Yellow Fairy Book," so that his work is not only familiar to the inmates of the nursery, but to modern critics who disdain mere printed pictures and care for nothing but autograph work. Certainly his designs have often lost much by their great reduction, for many of the originals were almost as large as four of these pages. His work is full of imagination, full of detail; perhaps at times a little overcrowded, to the extent of confusion. But children are not averse from a picture that requires much careful inspection to reveal all its story; and Mr. Ford's accessories all help to reiterate the main theme. As these eight volumes have an average of 100 pictures in each, and Mr. Ford has designed the majority, it is evident that, although his work is almost entirely confined to one series, it takes a very prominent place in current juvenile literature. That he must by this time have established his position as a prime favourite with the small people goes without saying.
ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE FLAME FLOWER." BY J. F. SULLIVAN (DENT AND CO. 1896)
Mr. Leslie Brooke has also a long catalogue of notable work in this class. For since Mr. Walter Crane ceased to illustrate the long series of Mrs. Molesworth's stories, he has carried on the record. "Sheila's Mystery," "The Carved Lions," "Mary," "My New Home," "Nurse Heathcote's Story," "The Girls and I," "The Oriel Window," and "Miss Mouse and her Boys" (all Macmillan), are the titles of these books to which he has contributed. A very charming frontispiece and title to John Oliver Hobbs' "Prince Toto," which appeared in "The Parade," must not be forgotten. The most fanciful of his designs are undoubtedly the hundred illustrations to Mr. Andrew Lang's delightful collection of "Nursery Rhymes," just published by F. Warne & Co. These reveal a store of humour that the less boisterous fun of Mrs. Molesworth had denied him the opportunity of expressing.
Mr. C. E. Brock, whose delightful compositions, somewhat in the "Hugh Thomson" manner, embellish several volumes of Messrs. Macmillan's Cranford series, has illustrated also "The Parachute," and "English Fairy and Folk Tales," by E. S. Hartland (1893), and also supplied two pictures to that most fascinating volume prized by all lovers of children, "W. V., Her Book," by W. Canton. Perhaps "Westward Ho!" should also be included in this list, for whatever its first intentions, it has long been annexed by bolder spirits in the nursery.
A. B. Frost, by his cosmopolitan fun, "understanded of all people," has probably aroused more hearty laughs by his inimitable books than even Caldecott himself. "Stuff and Nonsense," and "The Bull Calf," T. B. Aldrich's "Story of a Bad Boy," and many another volume of American origin, that is now familiar to every Briton with a sense of humour, are the most widely known. It is needless to praise the literally inimitable humour of the tragic series "Our Cat took Rat Poison." In Lewis Carroll's "Rhyme? and Reason?" (1883), Mr. Frost shared with Henry Holiday the task of illustrating a larger edition of the book first published under the title of "Phantasmagoria" (1869); he illustrated also "A Tangled Tale" (1886), by the same author, and this is perhaps the only volume of British origin of which he is sole artist. Mr. Henry Holiday was responsible for the classic pictures to "The Hunting of the Snark" by Lewis Carroll (1876).
Mr. R. Anning Bell does not appear to have illustrated many books for children. Of these, the two which introduced Mr. Dent's "Banbury Cross" series are no doubt the best known. In fact, to describe "Jack the Giant Killer" and the "Sleeping Beauty" in these pages would be an insult to "subscribers from the first." A story, "White Poppies," by May Kendall, which ran through Sylvia's Journal, is a little too grown-up to be included; nor can the "Heroines of the Poets," which appeared in the same place, be dragged in to augment the scanty list, any more than the "Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Keats's Poems." It is singular that the fancy of Mr. Anning Bell, which seems exactly calculated to attract a child and its parent at the same time, has not been more frequently requisitioned for this purpose. In the two "Banbury Cross" volumes there is evidence of real sympathy with the text, which is by no means as usual in pictures to fairy tales as it should be; and a delightfully harmonious sense of decoration rare in any book, and still more rare in those expressly designed for small people.
