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A Little Christmas Dream (Punch Magazine, December 26th, 1868).

Mr. L. Figuier, in the Thesis which precedes his interesting work on the world before the Flood condemns the practice of awakening the youthful mind to admiration by means of fables and Fairy Tales, and recommends in lieu thereof, the study of the Natural History of the World in which we live.

Christmas would be a bit more worthwhile with a few of these things patrolling the streets. George Du Maurier (1834–1896) gave the world the character of Svengali is his novel Trilby (1894) and that character’s name lives on even if the novel goes largely unread today. He turned to writing late when his eyesight failed and he was no longer able to maintain his career as an illustrator. Post-Beardsley, those illustrations and satires of Victorian life can seem rather stilted but VTS has examples of his more imaginative work, including this piece.

{ feuilleton } will be quiet for a couple of days while I visit family but, as is the custom here, the archive feature will be enabled to throw up random samples from the past.

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• The illustrators archive