Joyce Mercer's Illustrations for The Classic Fairy Tales of Hans Andersen

Robert Brandon's introduction to the 1935 edition of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales describes Joyce Mercer's style as 'inimitable and peculiarly individualistic; her treatment exemplary. Children cannot fail to be interested in the marvellous colour drawings and the subtle humour of the black and white; and grown ups will appreciate them also.'


The craft of the line in these illustrations is extremely elegant and calligraphic - and, graphically, extremely satisfying, particularly in the vignettes, with their sense of balance and consistency in the character and concentration of line work. They would look quite at home next to a treble clef. Unfortunately, these 1992 prints of the illustrations do not do justice to the precision and sharpness of the original drawings. The colour illustrations have a 'stained glass' look to them and use flowing black lines to contain some areas of colour, while other colours bleed into each other to create a marble effect.

Another Ugly Duchess update

Read my earlier posts on the Duchess here and here.


This photo appears as a frontispiece to a book of the Wife of Bath's tale (from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). The miserichord (referred to as 'The Shrew' in the caption) seems to be the source for F. W. Fairholt's engraving for History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art (1865), which was probably seen by John Tenniel and used as inspiration for his Duchess in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.



There is no reason to believe, however, that he ever saw the actual miserichord itself, which can be found in the church of St. Lawrence in Ludlow; Tenniel's Duchess bears a closer resemblance to the engraving than to the original. It is likely that the miserichord was added to the church in the 15th century, when most of the structure was rebuilt.


A character with a similar headdress can be seen in an illustration for Les Echecs Amoureux (c. 1496-8) depicting Pluto and his wife Persephone, who are unusually depicted as aged and ugly. Even though this dates from before Massys' Grotesque Old Woman (c. 1513), it need not be considered a source for the painting, so much as suggesting that this kind of headdress was probably a sort of accepted shorthand in art at the time for an ugly old woman. The shape of the headdress gives the head an overall deformed look (though in this particular illustration it perhaps has a double meaning, alluding to the horned minions on the right hand side of the composition).

Johann Gaspar Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente (1774-1778)

More attempts at discerning the physiognomy of madness, here from the eighteenth century.

A madman,

Four male idiots,

Two melancholics,

Six female idiots,

Two cretins.

The Sword in the Stone

T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone is one of my favourite childhood books. These illustrations are from a 1939 edition of the book - only a year after it first came out - for Reader's Union from Collins Publishers, London. I've no idea who the illustrator is - the book itself doesn't credit an illustrator, or even show an ISBN - but they have a 'Thurberesque' charm to them.

There are a number of similarities to the designs of the 1963 Disney adaptation, namely the walrus-whiskered Sir Ector, the plain clothes of Merlyn and the snarling pike. The image of Merlyn dozing is very similar to a Bill Peet story sketch for the film.

Also depicted is Madame Mim as an Aullay, a creature 'as much bigger than an elephant as an elephant is larger than a sheep. It was a sort of horse with an elephant's trunk.' Peet would later contemplate using this creature in the film.

Visit Michael Sporn's blog for more Merlin and Mim, and to see Peet's sketches of Merlin dozing and Mim as the Aullay.

Extract from Phillipe Pinel's 'A Treatise on Insanity' (1801)

Here, Pinel compares the perceived physiognomies of an idiot and a maniac. These extracts are courtesy of Sander L. Gilman's Seeing the Insane. References to the 'proportions of Apollo' allude to the perceived ideal facial proportions as determined by classical sculpture.

On first view of this idiot (lowest image), what appears most striking is the extremely disproportionate extent of the face, compared with the diminutive size of the cranium. No traits of animation are visible in his physiognomy. Every line indicates the most absolute stupidity. Between the height of the head and that of the whole stature, there is a very great disproportion. The cranium is greatly depressed both at the crown and at the temples. His looks are heavy and his mouth wide open. The whole extent of his knowledge is confined to three or four confused ideas, and that of his speech to as many inarticulate sounds. His capacity is so defective, that he can scarcely guide the food to his mouth; and his insensibility so great, that he is incapable of attending to the common calls of nature. His step is feeble, heavy and tottering. His disinclination to motion is excessive. He is totally insensible to the natural propensity for reproduction - a passion so strong even in the Cretin, and which gives him a deep consciousness of his existence. This equivocal being, who seems to have been placed by nature on the very confines of humanity, is the son of a farmer, and was brought to the hospital de Bicetre about two years ago. He appears to have been impressed from his infancy with the above characters of fatuity...

... The ancient artists, who were equally remarkable for the delicacy of their touch and their acuteness of observation, could not fail to discover those proportions of the head which are the essential constituents of beauty. They have, consequently, divided those of Apollo into four parts by horizontal planes at equal distances. One of those parts begins at the roots of the hair on the forehead, and extends to the crown. The form of the head of the maniac (uppermost image) varies no more than well-proportioned heads in general from this standard, since the whole height of his head is twenty-three centimetres. Subtracting one from the other, we obtain a remainder of six centimetres, which, compared with the whole height, gives a proportion very nearly approaching that of one to four, as in the head of Apollo. The height of the head of the idiot, on the contrary, is eighteen centimetres, and his face fifteen. On subtraction we have a distance of three centimetres, which is only one sixth of the height, and which shews how much the vault of the cranium is flattened, and, consequently, its capacity diminished. This diminution is still more strikingly apparent if we examine the human skull in another point of view. In well formed heads, a horizontal section of the cranium made in the direction of the squamous margin of the temporal bones, gives an irregular ellipsis of such a form, that the double ordinate passing at the anterior portion of those bones, is much shorter than that passing through the posterior part. The head of the maniac approaches in those respects to the proper proportions, for the posterior double ordinate is longer by two centimetres than the anterior. On the contrary, those two lines are about equal in the head of the idiot, as I have ascertained by a caliber compass; so that the section of this cranium would give a figure very nearly approaching that of a regular ellipsis.