Fairyland in Art and Poetry - Hardcover

Richard Doyle was one of the most popular illustrators of the Victorian era. Described by a contemporary as "just the sort of artist a child would ask to do a funny man on paper," he was best known for his "fairyland" figures.

Grade 3-7 Richard Doyle's classic 1870 book In Fairyland is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the museum has reproduced his charming and romantic chromolithographs along with fairy poetry. The selections are predominantly by 19th-century English favorites (John Keats, William Shakespeare, Walter de la Mare), though American, Irish, and Scottish poets are included, as well as some early 20th-century authors (Stevie Smith, Langston Hughes, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Eleanor Farjeon). The 22 poems, all metered and rhymed, match the spirit of the illustrations, and will appeal to readers in their Secret Garden or Anne of Green Gables stage. Several of the poems are excerpted (Shakespeare's from plays, without citation), and readers may be getting more than they bargained for with Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" or the excerpt from William Butler Yeats's "The Stolen Child," though these are worthy verses to be haunted by. With its beautiful colors and heavy-stock paper, this attractive book will be picked up as light fare-and readers may enjoy it as such. Libraries that never have enough "pictures of fairies" will certainly want at least one copy. -Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA
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