The Man Who Lived in the World of Dreams

Dante Alighieri—a man whose trek through heaven and hell has resonated through the centuries. If he hadn't truly lived, he would have had to be a protagonist of legend, like Faust.

Below, a beautiful portrait engraving of Dante, from a 19th century magazine.

Dante's life and visions were recounted for children in the wonderful early 20th century My Book House series, using the versatile Donn P. Crane as the illustrator, who has 'translated' the classic visuals of Gustave Doré.

Below, the opening page of the narrative, to give you the flavor of the text. It goes on recounting Dante's visions, but I'm just showing Crane's lovely drawings.

To Keep Busy the Little Hands and Little Head

I have no idea if or how Gordon Robinson might be related to the Brothers Robinson — Wm Heath, Chas Heath & Tho Heath. But his work is interesting to me in that none other than Walt Kelly claimed him as one of his early inspirations for his own fairy tale work.

Robinson has a few books with his illustrations out there available in one form or another, but it seems there ought to be more than are currently itemized. I'm going to keep looking for some, but in the meantime you can see a nice example here, from the 1930s, Sleeping Beauty. I'm going to show the whole book, cover to cover, and would claim generosity except that the book is only 10 pages in its entirety. I'm also including some zoom-in details cuz I really like his pen style.

Robinson's work coulda/woulda been great in fairy tale comic books.

Below, for the sake of completism, showing the mostly blank back cover too.

Below the sweet trademark slogan of the publisher:

Future of Women's Rights

I love the countenance of the young woman's face in the foreground.

You see the future of women's rights written in her features.

Harrison Fisher — The Ladies Home Journal — June 1913

Sweet and Low

With a little revision on my part regarding gender specifics, this is a lullabye I sang to my daughter when she was a wee one. I sang it sweet and low and usually by the time I was done she was sailing the western seas. When she was a tiny bit older I would sing her some pop ballads, but I'll go into that another time. Shhhhhh . . .

Opheliaesque

'There's rue for you, and here's some for me' that I don't have the name of the photographer for this dreamy Opheliaesque photo image. It resides in my image morgue, salvaged from a damaged book that lacked the photo credit. It was probably originally for a perfume ad. If anyone knows the photographer's name, please advise.

The duotone (tripletone?) colors are superb for the cast of a dream.

A Child's Book of Saints

I was going to upload this post much earlier today in honor of All Saints Day, but our dog took ill and we had to rush him off to the vet's, and I'm just now, late in the evening, able to complete this post. Our dog is doing well, flying high on some nifty drugs, but we're down 300 bucks for his tripping.

ANYway, in honor of All Saints Day, here be a set of pages from 1898 by Thomas Heath Robinson, the least known of the Brothers Robinson — illustrators all. They're not the most dazzling of images, but interesting in their own way, especially by way of demonstrating this illustrator's talents that were over-shadowed by Charles and William.

I've included several double page spreads, cuz I jes' love the whole layout of a book — words, stains, rough edges, ribbon 'n' all.

Welcome to November

How can it be November already?

Walter Buehr

Above, the rise of the mass printing presses, printing hundreds of magazines by the millions (and of course this is before all them comical books yet to come). Below, the SEP they're printing above.

Frederick Stanley