Richard Doyle (1) (1824–1883)

This is a stunning facsimile edition of the 1870 edition. Doyle's fairies are impish rather than cute; they often tease birds and bugs, but they can also be elegant like the fairy lady in her butterfly-drawn chariot. Doyle's designs are full of humour: the longs strands of the elf-king's beard are carried by three pages, with a fourth carrying the king's long hair, and the elven knights ride on grasshoppers and bugs and wasps.

The fairy illustrations might not be among Doyle's best work (he show more did that, imo, during his PUNCH years), but "In Fairy Land" is a beautiful volume nonetheless. show less

Jack runs around killing giants, using his cleverness, courage, and magic cloak and sword. Doyle is retelling old folk tales here, and some remind me of Thor's clever helper Thialfi. Doyle's prose is unobjectionable but nothing special. Read it for his wonderful illustrations - full of personality and humor, sometimes gruesome, always entertaining.

This beautifully curated collection of poems about fairyland includes works by William Butler Yeats, William Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Robert Louis Stevenson and Lord Alfred Tennyson among others, and features the fantastically naturalistic illustrations of Richard Doyle. This collection is a great reference book for quickly sourcing quality fairy literature and a resource for expanding interests in botanical drawing and magical beings.

A copy of the 1842 classic, complete with Richard Doyle's grotesque illustrations. It's a weird little book; I think the pictures would've freaked me out a bit when I was a kid, as even Jack looks rather evil, and the giants are pretty intense. A fun artifact, though, and it really shows what children's literature used to be...