Margery Darrell

I debated long and hard with myself about buying this book....admittedly second-hand in great condition for a book published in 1978 by the Book Club. And it's an interesting collection of tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham. I've always loved the work of Rackham. I was exposed to it as a child and my implanted memories of fairy tales and folk tales are very much inhabited by the figures and incredible landscapes and twisted trees (with faces) that Rackham managed to create. I learned, for the first time, from this book, that Rackham insisted on picking his own lines from the text to illustrate. I've often wondered about this; eg. from Alice in Wonderland....Alice with the pig...."It grunted again, so violently, that she looked down upon its face in some alarm". Why would you chose that line to illustrate? But he did ....and it worked.
I've also found with illustrators from the golden age of children's books....around 1900....that the colours always seemed rather dark. And I guess two things are at play here. One is that Rackham's work, anyway, is invariable pen and wash...or just pen. The straight pen drawings seemed to have survived well and reproduced well but the colour's in his coloured illustrations have darkened and maybe just haven't been reproduced all that well.
I was able to compare a few illustrations in this book with those in a recent large format book: "Arthur Rackham: A life with illustration" and could see that the reproduction in the latter are much clearer....the pen work sharp and clear and the colours lighter and brighter. So unfortunately, this current book suffers a lot in comparison. Offsetting that is the fact that the current book has some stories that I have not seen illustrated by Rackham before: Fables from Aesop, The Lady and the Lion. I'm not even sure that have seen the whole of Rip Van Winkle illustrated by Rackham.
The stories, are classics, which I, more or less take as given ....although frequently they vary a bit depending on the editor or story teller. But I bought the book for the illustrations and I'm not disappointed.
According to the text, Rackham himself was a bit gnomish...like many of his characters...and he even drew himself in the role of the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland. But he ran a tight ship domestically, apparently.....always frugal and pretty strict with his kids. Frankly, he doesn't sound like a lot of fun....though I recall reading somewhere else about some of his travel in Europe as a young man and he seemed to be a bit more "fun-loving" there. But what a superb artist. I notice that a number of modern children's book illustrators acknowledge a debt to Rackham (eg. Lizbeth Zwerger...and you can see it in her figures).
Overall, I'm quite happy that I made the purchase and happy to give the book 4 stars.… (more)

A collection of several tales which Arthur Rackham has illustrated, this has been lovingly compiled into a beautiful edition. The introduction is well written with details of the illustrator's life. The illustrations are gold-framed, many of them in color. The Grimm's fairy tales are strange and wonderful, and I had never read Peter Pan in Kensington Garden before. It was a bit odd, but definitely a story of its time. Rip Van Winkle, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, A Christmas Carol and several tales from Shakespeare are included among other treats. A wonderful addition to my collection of Arthur Rackham illustrated books.… (more)

This is a collection of various 'fairy stories' (though it includes Washington Irving's 'Rip van Winkle' and Dickens' 'A Christmas carol' which rather stretch the definition a bit) illustrated by Rackham, perhaps the best illustrator of the Art Nouveau period. As such, it is useful to have a compendium of his work collected together in one place, though I note it omits his seminal illustrations for the German myth 'Siegfried and the twilight of the gods' (as in the Wagner operas) which include a number of bare-breasted warrior maidens and Nibelung dwarves which look suspiciously like Nazi caricatures of Jews....… (more)