Percy Billinghurst’s fables

These are actually La Fontaine’s fables illustrated by a British artist, Percy J. Billinghurst, but I try to avoid unwieldly post titles that mix artist and writer. There isn’t much of a biographical record for Percy Billinghurst, and what records there are don’t agree about his birth and death dates which are generally given as 1871—1933. One thing that is certain is Billinghurst’s fondness for drawing animals. In addition to this volume he illustrated a book of his own, A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals in 1901, and an edition of Aesop’s fables in 1910.

The La Fontaine book dates from 1900, and has the French text translated into clumsy English verse. Whoever did this isn’t credited but the translations by Walter Thornbury for one of the Doré editions are far better. Billinghurst’s illustrations are typical of a graphic style much favoured at the time by The Studio magazine: clear lines with heavy outlines and little shading, and with the captions hand-lettered and incorporated into the drawing itself. Those dots separating the words are another Studio hallmark. A bookplate by Billinghurst was featured in an ex libris collection published by The Studio in 1898 which suggests there may be more of his early drawings to be found inside the magazine.