Children's Books and Their Illustrators. Gleeson White

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       Gleeson White

      Children's Books and Their Illustrators

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664654052

Table of Contents

       CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153-157 Fifth Ave, N.Y.

       THE INTERNATIONAL

       STUDIO

       SPECIAL WINTER-NUMBER 1897-8

       For Younger Readers

       Four Capital Books

       NEW BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

       CHILDRENS' BOOKS

       R. H. RUSSELL, New York

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153–157 Fifth Ave, N.Y.

       Table of Contents

"THE HEIR TO FAIRY-LAND" FROM A WATER-COLOUR BY ROBERT HALLS

THE INTERNATIONAL

       Table of Contents

STUDIO

       Table of Contents

SPECIAL WINTER-NUMBER 1897–8

       Table of Contents

      CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND THEIR ILLUSTRATORS. BY GLEESON WHITE.

      There are some themes that by their very wealth of suggestion appal the most ready writer. The emotions which they arouse, the mass of pleasant anecdote they recall, the ghosts of far-off delights they summon, are either too obvious to be worth the trouble of description or too evanescent to be expressed in dull prose. Swift, we are told (perhaps a little too frequently), could write beautifully of a broomstick; which may strike a common person as a marvel of dexterity. After a while, the journalist is apt to find that it is the perfect theme which proves to be the hardest to treat adequately. Clothe a broomstick with fancies, even of the flimsiest tissue paper, and you get something more or less like a fairy-king's sceptre; but take the Pompadour's fan, or the haunting effect of twilight over the meadows, and all you can do in words seems but to hide its original beauties. We know that Mr. Austin Dobson was able to add graceful wreaths even to the fan of the Pompadour, and that another writer is able to impart to the misty twilight not only the eerie fantasies it shows the careless observer, but also a host of others that only a poet feels, and that only a poet knows how to prison within his cage of printed syllables. Indeed, of the theme of the present discourse has not the wonder-working Robert Louis Stevenson sung of "Picture Books in Winter" and "The Land of Story Books," so truly and clearly that it is dangerous for lesser folk to attempt essays in their praise? All that artists have done to amuse the august monarch "King Baby" (who, pictured by Mr. Robert Halls, is fitly enthroned here by way of frontispiece) during the playtime of his immaturity is too big a subject for our space, and can but be indicated in rough outline here.

       THE "MONKEY-BOOK" A FAVOURITE IN THE NURSERY (By permission of James H. Stone, Esq., J.P.)

       "ROBINSON CRUSOE." THE WRECK FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK

      Luckily, a serious study of the evolution of the child's book already exists. Since the bulk of this number was in type, I lighted by chance upon "The Child and his Book," by Mrs. E. M. Field, a most admirable volume which traces its subject from times before the Norman conquest to this century. Therein we find full accounts of MSS. designed for teaching purposes, of early printed manuals, and of the mass of literature intended to impress "the Fear of the Lord and of the Broomstick." Did space allow, the present chronicle might be enlivened with many an excerpt which she has culled from out-of-the-way sources. But the temptation to quote must be controlled. It is only fair to add that in that work there is a very excellent chapter to "Some Illustrators of Children's Books," although its main purpose is the text of the books. One branch has found its specialist and its exhaustive monograph, in Mr. Andrew Tuer's sumptuous volumes devoted to "The Horn Book."

       "CRUSOE AND XURY ESCAPING" FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK

      Perhaps there is no pleasure the modern "grown-up" person envies the youngsters of the hour as he envies them the shoals of delightful books which publishers prepare for the Christmas tables of lucky children. If he be old enough to remember Mrs. Trimmer's "History of the Robins," "The Fairchild Family," or that Poly-technically inspired romance, the "Swiss Family Robinson," he feels that a certain half-hearted approval of more dreary volumes is possibly due to the glamour which middle age casts upon the past. It is said that even Barbauld's "Evenings at Home" and "Sandford and Merton" (the anecdotes only, I imagine) have been found toothsome dainties by unjaded youthful appetites; but when he compares these with the books of the last twenty years, he wishes he could become a child again to enjoy their sweets to the full.

       "CRUSOE SETS SAIL ON HIS EVENTFUL VOYAGE" FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHAP-BOOK

      Now nine-tenths of this improvement is due to artist and publisher; although it is obvious that illustrations imply something to illustrate, and, as a rule (not by any means without exception), the better the text the better the pictures. Years before good picture-books there were good stories, and these, whether they be the classics of the nursery, the laureates of its rhyme, the unknown author of its sagas, the born story-tellers—whether they date from prehistoric cave-dwellers, or are of our own age, like Charles Kingsley or Lewis Carroll—supply the text to spur on the artist to his best achievements.