The waves of all the worlds seemed to whirl past them in one huge green cataract. An Arthur Rackham illustration for Becuma of the White Skin from Irish Fairy Tales. My scan.

Charles Robinson ~ Hansel and Grethel ~ The Big Book of Fairy Tales ~ 1911 ~ via Hansel and Grethel in the Forest

The dark and wondrous world of children's stories.

The Waterfall Fairy Illustrated by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

Diamonds and Toads (1894)

Siegfried waking Brunhilda

Tumblr Blog

The fairy tales of George MacDonald have been read and loved for over one hundred years. In his influential essay "The Fantastic Imagination," first published in 1893, MacDonald posed and answered a series of questions exploring the nature of his...

The brilliant young Mathematician Evariste Galois was killed in a duel when he was only 20. His biographer, E.T. Bell, described the last night of Galois' life this way: All night long he had spent the fleeting hours feverishly dashing off his scientific last will and testament, writing against time to glean a few of the great things in his teeming mind before the death he saw could overtake him. Time after time he broke off to scribble in the margin "I have not time; I have not time," and passed on to the next frantically scrawled outline. What he wrote in those last desperate hours before the dawn will keep generations of mathematicians busy for hundreds of years.Later biographers believe Bell's account to be a little overheated; for example, Galois did not invent his famous theorem that very night, he had been working on it for some time. Still, it is clear that when faced with almost certain death the next morning, Galois' defense was to keep doing what he did best, and to do as much of it as possible before his time ran out. His parting words were: There are a few things left to be completed in this proof. I have not the time....I hope some men will find it profitable to sort out this mess. I embrace you with effusion. Which brings us to Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900-1931). As a child growing up in Missouri, all Sterrett wanted to do was draw. There weren't many opportunities for artists in Missouri back then, but as a young teenager Sterrett audaciously entered the Kansas State Fair art competition and won three first prizes. Encouraged, Sterrett went to Chicago at age 15 to attend high school and study art. The Art Institute was so impressed with her that it gave her a full scholarship. When Sterrett reached 19, two things happened: first, she received a commission to illustrate her very first book (Old French Fairy Tales by Comtesse de Segur). Second, she came down with tuberculosis which soon began to sap her strength. The race was on. For the rest of her short life, Sterrett worked as hard as her failing strength would allow, illustrating Tanglewood Tales, the Arabian Nights and Myths and Legends. By the time she turned 22, she had to enter a sanatorium where she could only work for short periods of time before resting. Yet, Sterrett's exhaustion doesn't show up in her pictures. You don't see her taking shortcuts or compromising the quality of her work. She seemed intent on making her pictures as perfect as she could, to isolate them from the limitations and frustrations of her life. She knew the game was fixed against her; she wouldn't have a lifetime to improve her skills or compile a major body of work, the way other artists did. Working under those restrictions it might have made more sense to give up or resort to drink, but still she persisted. Such time as she had, that time was going to be devoted to making pictures. She was almost done illustrating Myths and Legends when she died. The local newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an obituary that remarked upon the disparity between her life and the exotic world she drew: Her life spent in prosaic places of the West and Middle West, she made pictures of haunting loveliness, suggesting Oriental lands she never saw and magical realms no one ever knew except in the dreams of childhood....Perhaps it was the hardships of her own life that gave the young girl's work its fanciful quality. In the imaginative scenes she set down on paper she must have escaped from the harsh actualities of existence. I view each of Sterrett's pictures, like I view Galois' journal, as a little pearl of resistance against the fact that life is unfair and death comes too soon. Not much of a consolation, you say? It seems to be all we've got, which is why it might make sense to pay attention to her achievement.

Fantasy fiction and fairy tales are often considered the same genre. But are Cinderella and the Hobbit the same? I don't think so. Read on to find out why.

Arthur Rackham (1867 – 1939) is widely regarded as one of the leading illustrators from the 'Golden Age' of British book illustration which encompassed the years from 1900 until the start of the First World War. Arthur Rackham's works have become very popular since his death, both in North America and Britain. His images have been widely used by the greeting card industry and many of his books are still in print or have been recently available in both paperback and hardback editions. His original drawings and paintings are keenly sought at the major international art auction houses. This is part 3 of an 8-part post on the works of Arthur Rackham. For full biographical notes see part 1. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play by William Shakespeare. Believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596, it portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors, who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. The play, categorised as a Comedy, is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world. Originally published in 1907, some of these illustrations have later dates. 1908 Cover of A Midsummer Night's Dream Title page Titania lying asleep Hermia Where often you and I upon faint primrose-buds were wont to lie, emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet She never had so sweet a changeling The Meeting of Oberon and Titania Fairies away! We shall chide downright, if I longer stay To hear the sea-maid's music Ere the leviathan can swim a league On the ground sleep sound, I'll apply to your eye gentle lover, remedy Come, now a roundel …will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid Lord, what fools these mortals be … and her fairy sent to bear him to my bower in fairy land And a fairy song Fair Helena Call'd Robin Goodfellow, are not you he that frights the maidens of the villagery …am that merry wanderer of the night O Bottom, thou art changed! What angel wakes me from my flowery bed? …ghosts, ivanciering here and there troop hovie to churchyards O monstrous! O strange we are haunted pray, masters fly, masters! Help! How now, spirit! Whither wander you Never so weary, never so in woe, bedabbled with dew and torn with briars To make my small elves coats Are you sure that we are awake. It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream Undine is a fairy-tale novella; an early German romance, written in 1811 by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué in which Undine, a water spirit, marries a knight named Huldebrand in order to gain a soul. This version originally published in 1909. 1909 Cover of Undine Title page

At Rest in the Dark Wood by Kay Nielsen

Moments of a child’s young life captured for eternity by their artist father or mother - from Gainsborough to Berthe Morisot - are the touching subject of a charming new book.