{"id":31728,"date":"2026-09-28T16:30:33","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=31728"},"modified":"2026-09-28T14:44:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T13:44:04","slug":"percy-billinghursts-fables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2026\/09\/28\/percy-billinghursts-fables\/","title":{"rendered":"Percy Billinghurst’s fables"},"content":{"rendered":"

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These are actually La Fontaine’s fables<\/a> 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\u20141933. 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<\/em> in 1901, and an edition of Aesop’s fables in 1910.<\/p>\n

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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 Dor\u00e9 editions<\/a> are far better. Billinghurst’s illustrations are typical of a graphic style much favoured at the time by The Studio<\/em> 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<\/em> hallmark. A bookplate by Billinghurst was featured in an ex libris collection published by The Studio<\/em><\/a> in 1898 which suggests there may be more of his early drawings to be found inside the magazine.<\/p>\n

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Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Led Zeppelin IV: Jimmy Page versus Little Bo-Peep<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke and others in The Studio<\/a>
\n\u2022 Aubrey Beardsley in The Studio<\/a>
\n\u2022 Bookplates from The Studio<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Studio & Studio International<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “Percy Billinghurst’s fables”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Percy Billinghurst's fables","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,42,4,48],"tags":[593,14796,14795,12198,14797],"class_list":["post-31728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-design","category-illustrators","tag-gustave-dore","tag-jean-de-la-fontaine","tag-percy-j-billinghurst","tag-the-studio-magazine","tag-walter-thornbury"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-8fK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31729,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31728\/revisions\/31729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}