More illustration from George Wharton Edwards (1859–1950) with a collection of ballads from 1910. These being for the American market, the emphasis is on the picturesque England of kings and queens, duelling knights, and Robin Hood. A couple of exceptions, such as The Twa Corbies, point to the darker world of the Child Ballads where love and virtue aren’t always rewarded, and unnatural death is often the order of the day. Browse A Book of Old English Ballads here or download it here.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Happily for anyone desirous of analog copies of both this book and BIRD GODS, nice modern editions are available on Amazon here in the States for fairly reasonable prices. Amazon.uk as well.
There are some other books illustrated by GWE that look interesting as well. Wonder what “Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders” (available on Kindle!) or “A picture album of London” would be like?
The Internet Archive has a lot more of his books. The Flanders one, for example, can be seen here:
http://archive.org/details/vanishedtowersch00edwa
I picked out these two for their line work. Some of his other books have a different, more picturesque, art style which I didn’t like as much.