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

[davesslave.livejournal.com]

Beautiful artwork. But I don't know if Sarah should see them.

[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.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

First of all, HOLY SHIT.

Secondly, I have a book which I'm pretty sure reproduces one of the original paintings, or at least it doesn't look much like an engraving. So I scanned it for you.

[letzteschatten.livejournal.com]

good lord. k, haven't seen many like this. makes the others we have look like nursery wall paper material.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant! Does he do Rumpelstiltzkin tearing himself in half?