a cheerful one

[kip_w]

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I've scanned the second of the fairy tales from that German 1873 edition. They aren't quite as scary as the 18th century versions, but with Gustav Dore's art, they reach some pretty Gothic levels of horror. Witness this cheery fellow:



That's Mister Giant to you, in the story of Tom Thumb. The picture I took this example from is probably the scariest thing in the book. Click on it to see all the current pictures in the "Es war einmal..." flickr set, including a rather lovely study of a lantern beam at night.
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Comments

[madfilkentist]

That book looks wonderful!

I have that illustration, in an excellent book called The Classic Fairy Tales, which has the oldest known English versions of a number of fairy tales. It turns out the Giant is stupidly killing his own kids, so everything's all right ... I guess.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It's a beautiful book, and sadly fragile. I'm being as careful as I can with it, but it's losing bits and pieces every time I turn it over. If it had been in mint or anything, I'd have been afraid to try scanning it at all.

Ah, "The plucky hero tricks him into killing his own family." I've seen instances of that. What's the one where the baddie is tricked into killing his own mom?

I might see if the library can get The Classic Fairy Tales for me to look at.