GIFT-BOOKS.
SOME ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS.* PunLicAmron in large illustrated editions may generally be taken as a proof of the general affection for an author's work and a gauge of public taste rather than as a bid for popularity; that would be a bolder speculation than most publishers are nowadays prepared to undertake. And only rarely does it seem likely that an artist has definitely wanted to illustrate some particular volume or poem because he or she was moved to add pictorial interpretation to the original author's story, thought, or self-expression in words. It is by no means always easy to trace the fitness of the collaboration, nor can one always acquit the illustrator of forgetting that his work is primarily subordinate, and that the new tail should not wag the old dog. The old-fashioned illustrator would never have considered it part of his business to produce a series of pictures flapping loosely upon thick brown or green sheets which thrust themselves forward as the pages are turned. Most of these books are not editions which one would choose to hold and read. Even in the best instances of illustration one would generally prefer to read from a handier volume, however much one might appreciate a portfolio of the artist's interpretations to turn to as a pleasing commentary. But we call them " Gift-Books." Are they books or gifts ? Are they often bought for the purchaser's reading, or are they a kind of Christmas-present currency ? Perhaps the retail booksellers could give better opinions on that than we can.
In recent years nearly every illustrator of note has thought well to assume for once at least an Oriental guise. There has been much study of Japanese prints and other Asiatic art. Mechanical reproduction puts its limits upon their success in colour, and the composing of the pictures must remain a stumbling-block to the Occidental. Mr. Dulac is not new to this counterfeit effort, which he pursues with great skill. This year he has illustrated Princess Badoura (1), as retold from The Arabian Nights by Mr. Laurence Housman. The story of Badoura and Camaralzaman is one of the best as it is one of the longest of the tales, and so is as well suited as any to
• (1) Princess Badoura. Retold by Laurence Housman. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. London: Hodder & Stoughton. [10s. 6d. not and 25s. net.]-(2) Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Rendered into English Verso by
E. FitzGerald. Illustrated by Rend Bull. Same publishers. [15s. net and 42s. net.]-(3) Early Poems. By William Morris. Illustrated by Florence Harrison. London: Black ie & Son. [12s. 6d. net.]-(4) Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. By William Wordsworth. Illustrated by N. Neilson Gray. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. [5s. net.1(5) The Jackdaw of Rheims. By Thomas Ingoldsby. Illustrated by C. Folkard. London: Gay & Hancock. [10s. 6d. net.]-(6) The Old Cisriosity Shop. By C. Dickens. Illustrated by F. Reynolds. London Hodder & Stoughton. [1.5s. net and 42a. net.]- (7) The Chimes. By C. Dickens. Illustrated by Hugh Thomson. Same publishers. [6s. not.]-(8) Vanity Pair. By W. M. Thackeray. Illustrated by Lewis Bummer. Same publishers. [15s. net and 42s. net.] -(9) Kidnapped. By R. L. Stevenson. Illustrated by W. R. S. Stott. London: Cassell & Co. rs. 6d. net.)- (10) The Pavilion on the Links. By R. L. Stevenson. Illus- trated by Gordon Browne. London: Chatto & Windus. [3s. 6d. net.1- (11) Under the Greenwood Tree. By Thomas Hardy. Illustrated by Keith Henderson. London: Chatto and Windus. [6s. net.] -(12) The Wind in the Willows. By Kenneth Grahame. Illustrated by Paul Bransom. Loudon : Methuen & Co. [7s. 6d. net.]-(13) Good Wives. By L. M. Alcott. Illus- trated by H. Copping. London: R.T.S. [7s. 6d. net.] (14) The Gathering of Brother Ifilarius. By Michael Fairless. London Duckworth & Co. 17s. 6d. net.)-(15) The Open Road. Compiled by E. V. Lucas. Illustrated by Claude shenersen. London: Methuen & Co. [15e. net.] be presented in a volume by itself. Mr. Housman gives briefly with it the story of Shahriar and Scheherazade at the beginning and the end. China is the scene of part of the story, and Mr. Dulac has gone beyond Persia to the Far East for his style.— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (9) must have tempted at least one illustrator annually since FitzGerald came to his own. Mr. Rene Bull this year seems to challenge Mr. Dulac's effort of a few years ago. He may surpass in the generous quantity of his work in colour and in black-and-white, but he does not triumph in quality, in spite of a great advance upon his early work. We must grant that he catches some of the splendour of the East and the languor of the poem, but nothing will make him a mystic, and some of his small grotesque drawings are quite out of place, though often very clever.—Of native English verse we have several new editions. William Morris's Early Poems (3), chiefly Arthurian, have been illustrated by Miss Florence Harrison. She has already illustrated an edition of Christina Rossetti's works, and it is easy to see of what school she is a disciple. But while following pre-Raphaelite figure-drawing and the yearning expression of some of its leaders, she has plainly studied the results of process-reproduction, and in her colours she sometimes reminds us of M. Bontet de Monville's successful work (in his Jeanne d'Arc, for instance) : this is to the good.—Wordsworth's ode on the Intimations of Immor- tality ('),as illustrated by Miss Neilson Gray, is less strenuous. The pictures are very pretty and feminine. Most of them show us small children in more or less hazy atmospheres, with an occasional grown-up figure of very solemn countenance.— Mr. Folkard has produced a fine picture-book with the verses of The Jackdaw of Rheims (5) scattered about its pages. Is it not time, by the way, that Barham's part should be acknow- ledged? Perhaps the best picture is the Cardinal in the act of cursing, but several of the large, crowded, colour plates are full of life and humour. There is no great delicacy about them, but any amount of spirit and amusing detail.
Among classic works of English fiction two of Dickens's books appear in new guises. Mr. Reynolds adds The Old Curiosity Shop (6) to his series. It is a handsome volume, honestly though not splendidly printed, and the illustrations are bold and good. For instance, there is a very daring and successful Mrs. Jarley. Little Nell is almost as sentimental as Dickens could have desired. Dick Swiveller is presented, as we should wish, several times and successfully, but in the company of Miss Sopby Wackles he appears a different being from the Dick of other plates.—Mr. Hugh Thomson has chosen The Chimes (7) and illustrated it with genial and pretty pictures in his style of line and colour-wash. His toothless Trotty -Peck is a good realisation.—Vanity Fair (8) is well illustrated by Mr. Lewis Baumer. For ourselves we would rather have Thackeray's own whimsical semi- caricatures beside the text, but Mr. Baumer has done very skilful work in his gallery of portraits. There is no Sir Pitt nor Lady Jane, and his Dobbin is so exaggeratedly austere that it is hardly successful. But his Becky with Jos is an unutter- able minx; we know she could act generously, but heartlessness was the role she chose, and here she looks capable of any con- quest and any disloyalty.—Two illustrators also have worked upon Robert Louis Stevenson's books. His Kidnapped (9) is illustrated this time by Mr. Stott. The frontispiece is not very successful ; though the perspective may be technically correct, it gives the impression that the soldiers in the heather must have seen Alan and David on their rock. But on the whole the eight pictures are well up to a high standard of hook illustration, and nearly all the faces are good. Perhaps the last picture of " my uncle " on the doorstep of Shows is the best.—The Pavilion on the Links (10) appears in a volume by itself, illustrated by Mr. Gordon Browne, chiefly in black-and-white. His drawing is very skilful, though the total results seem hardly adequate to this breathless tale of violence and romance, but we expect high standards where Stevenson is concerned. Mr. Browne is at his best with one or two figures alone in stormy scenery.
Mr. Hardy's early novel, Under the Greenwood Tree (11), is illustrated by Mr. Keith Henderson. Some of the pictures are tolerable, though without distinction. In others he has tried to produce a decorative effect by bright, crude colours with startling green outlines. "In the Orchard" is a clever piece of composition, but in most of them there is the strained effect of an amateur.—To come to another living author's work, Mr. Kenneth Grahame's delightful animal story, The Wind in the Willows (12), has attained the honour of an illustrated edition. The book is full of imagina- tion and humour. The kindly, humane animals, especially the generous and poetic Rat, are fortunate in finding Mr. Paul Bransom to depict them. With pleasantly subdued colours he catches the natural animal happily in very odd circumstances.—Another book for the young is Miss Alcott's Good Wives (u1), the sequel to Little Women. England can claim no better books for girls than these perfectly charming American stories of fifty years ago. Mr. Copping has illus- trated Good Wives very satisfactorily with attractive coloured plates of the young people and "old" Fritz in costumes of the date, just after the Civil War.—" Michael Fairless" can no longer be counted among living authors, but perhaps her mystical story of the Black Death, The Gathering of Brother Hilarius (14), is the latest written of all these books. It puts forward the knowledge of the world's beauties beneath the outward sin and squalor, and has found a modest illus- trator, "E. F. B.," whose coloured pictures have merit. They are competent and careful, except for the frontispiece, where the figures seem to be at least ten feet high.—Lastly, there is a new edition of that very popular anthology, The Open Road (15), compiled by Mr. E. V. Lucas. It has grown from a pocket companion for wayfarers into a great quarto volume in this edition de luxe. Mr. Claude Shepperson has supplied a number of coloured plates to illustrate various verses here and there, and generally to carry out the compiler's aim of glorify- ing the traveller's way through the open country. A few are fanciful pictures in which landscape is subordinate (for instance, a Bacchic scene with the figures rather after the manner of Stothard), but the majority are of wide, often down- land country with small figures in the foreground. This is a typical gift-book with which to close our notice.
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