Fantasy: The Golden Age of Fantastic Illustration

by Brigid Peppin

First U.S. edition. A collection of the Fantasy illustration of the Victorian era. Includes the works of Rackham, Dulac, Beardsley and others. Beautifully illustrated, many in color. With the bookplate and pencil signature of Gavin Bridson. 192 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..

Genres: Art, Fantasy

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a rather brief introduction (compared to the size of the book), Peppin presents a great number of fantastical illustrations from the golden age of illustration. Full citations are provided, but little further information on the texts or the illustrators' lives is given. Illustrations that were originally published in color are reproduced so here, though most of the illustrations are, understandably, in black and white. The large format of the book allows for lush, full-page reproductions and increased sizes (without sacrificing resolution too much). A good resource for images, but not so much for information.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essay portion of this book is mostly a hodgepodge of Freudian gibberish interspersed into a fairly bland Genesis-style x begat y begat z summary of artists of “The Golden Age of Fantastic Illustration” from around 1860 (Millais, Rossetti, Holman, Hunt, Sandys, Hughes, Houghton) to about 1918 (Nielson, Clarke). It ended because World War I killed gift books, and comic strips became the outlet for fantasy illustration.

The essay section starts off with promise, stating that the resurgence of “Such illustrators as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, and Kay Nielsen” is due to a “more sophisticated appreciation of the fantasy elements in their work.”

It was in the realms of fantasy that illustration reached its highest levels, through a happy interaction of opportunity and inspiration: developments in printing and reproduction combined with the growth of the middle class audience for books and magazines to offer a perfect medium for expression the cultural preoccupations of the era.

But the only preoccupations seriously discussed are sex, and that in a Freudian style that was out of date within psychology even in 1975 but which non-psychologists continued to use without even really understanding it.

Fortunately, the essay is only really an excuse to provide a lot of beautiful art. Most of it is black and white, but some are also some wonderful color reproductions. There are full-page reproductions of some great art, such as Gustav Doré’s “Baron Munchausen’s second, but accidental, visit to the moon” and Sidney Sime’s amazing work for Lord Dunsany’s Time and the Gods, which I am now going to have to read. If the writing is half as good as the art, it’s going to be amazing.

Vernon Hill’s illustrations for The New Inferno capture a horror that would be at home in comic books and movie posters today; Charles Robinson would be right at home on an eighties cover of Dragon Magazine. Richard Doyle’s The Knight and the Spectre might not have gone on the cover of the magazine, but it would have fit on the cover of the Dungeons and Dragons books.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. He puts an almost Lovecraftian spin on either London or Neverland, well before Lovecraft.

W. T. Horton’s work, like many of this era’s illustrators, has a bit of a Japanese influence, but it’s also uniquely stark.

Many of these (as I’ve discovered trying to make links to the art for this review) are either unavailable online or at far lower quality than are reproduced in this book. If you run across this book and are interested in fantasy art, I recommend browsing through it. You’ll probably want to pick it up.

[Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book! It's a great one to sit town and turn the pages looking at the beautiful classic book illustrations. They are stunning! I feel like these illustrators are starting to become forgotton, which is really sad. I go into bookstores and even the most seasoned clerks don't know who Kay Nielsen or Edmund Dulac are. It's really sad. A book like this keeps their memory alive. Check it out and continue to appreciate the Golden Age of Illustration in all of it's glory. Kay Nielsen is my absolute favorite by the way :)

[Matthew Schacht · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing illustrations!

[Corinne Copelan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, just beautiful, with some of my favorite illustrators: Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Harry Clarke, René Bull, Edmund DuLac, Arthur Rackam, W. Heath Robinson, and Kay Nielsen to name a few! Some of the BEST Fairytales' illustrators. A treasure to look at and read again, and again.