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Passage Illustrated

Now you must know that Cinderella had a godmother, who was a dwarf, and who used to come to see her sometimes, and she came into the kitchen just as Cinderella had taken her seat in the chimney-corner. The little old lady sat down upon a small log of wood on the opposite side. . . .

Commentary

Bravely Cruikshank issued his Cinderella later in 1854, though Dickens had parodied it, as if in advance, in "Frauds on the Fairies". . . . Not only did the artist refuse to compromise his editing principles, but appended a note "To the Public" in which readers who might fall into same heresies as "my friend Charles Dickens" were advised to read his "Letter" to that gentleman. But, for whatever reason, interest in Cruikshank's fairy tales seems to have diminished; for his next contribution, Puss in Boots, though probably completed in 1853 or 1854, was not published until 1864. The artist probably held Dickens responsible for the hiatus; certainly he was still smarting from the artist's reprimand. — Jane Rabb Cohen, p. 35.

That Cruikshank had been parodied in advance must have taken some of his relish in attempting a temperance version of "Cinderella and The Glass Slipper," for his work on this story is generally inferior to his engravings for the previous entries in The Fairy Library, despite a very effective ornate title-page. Although well received by the public, his dedicated temperance works with their grim moralising, The Bottle (1847) and The Drunkard's Children (1848) had probably marked a downward turning point in his career as an illustrator of books, and, having lost his momentum, he never fully regained it. And, even in those works, it is the narrative power of the texts rather than the quality of the engraving that most engages the reader. Born in 1792, Cruikshank was already 56, and probably past his greatest period of innovation — but he still had thirty years of artistic output ahead of him, including, of course, the four components of Geiorge Cruikshank's Fairy Library (1853-65).

George Cruikshank's Fairy Library consists of four stories; "Cinderella" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" . . . , along with "Hop o' my Thumb and the Seven League Boots" and "Puss in Boots." Cruikshank was already a distinguished caricaturist and illustrator of books for children and adults when he produced this work. His illustrations for the first English translation of Grimm’s Fairy Tales were praised widely, but his own rewriting of fairytales was criticised, most prominently by Charles Dickens. This was not due to the quality of the illustrations, but because, in line with his temperance beliefs, Cruikshank rewrote aspects of the fairytales to warn the reader against the evils of alcohol. Thus, for instance, the preparations for Cinderella's marriage include the court throwing all alcohol in the palace on a bonfire . . .. Dickens, a friend of Cruikshank, was outraged at what he considered to be a betrayal of the essence of fairytales and, in protest he published an essay in his weekly magazine Household Words entitled "Frauds on the Fairies" in protest (1853). — See more at https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/george-cruikshanks-fairy-library#sthash.u2f5mNF3.dpuf

The cover has allusions to the Fairy Godmother from "Cinderella and The Glass Slipper" (probably the best-known of the four tales, with antecedents in both Grimm and Perrault) and the Garden Fairy (above) from "Hop-o' My-Thumb," the initial story in the collection. The ornate spine features vignettes from all four stories: Hop in the Seven-league Boots from "Hop-o' My-Thumb" (top); Cinderella rushing away from the palace just before midnight (centre, the largest of the vignettes); Jack climbing the bean-stalk; and, at the very bottom, Puss in Boots.

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas; Michael Slater and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

British Library. "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library." Romantics and Victorians. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/george-cruikshanks-fairy-library

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Cruikshank, George. Cinderella and The Glass Slipper. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. The third volume in George Cruikshank's Fairy Library. London: David Bogue, 1854. (Price one shilling) 10 etchings on 6 tipped-in pages, including frontispiece.

Cruikshank, George. George Cruikshank's Fairy Library: "Hop-O'-My-Thumb," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots". London: George Bell, 1865.

Guildhall Library blog. "A Gem from Guildhall Library's Shelves: George Cruikshank's Fairy Library by George Cruikshank published by Routledge in London (c. 1870)." 8 August 2014. https://guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/a-gem-from-guildhall-librarys-shelves-george-cruikshanks-fairy-library-by-george-cruikshank-published-by-routledge-in-london-c1870/

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University. "George Cruikshank." http://library.tulane.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/fairy_tales/george_cruikshank

Hubert, Judd D. "George Cruikshank's Graphic and Textual Reactions to Mother Goose." Marvels & Tales, Volume 25, Number 2, 2011 (pp. 286-297). Project Muse. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/462736/pdf

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.

Vogler, Richard, The Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. New York: Dover, 1979.

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Last modified 29 June 2017