The history of illustration on my bookshelf

I'm sorting my bookshelf, and of course, have to look at every book before I decide to reshelf or pass it on. Here are some of my favorite illustrations.

Looking up information online to write about them proved to be a real lesson in the history of children's book illustration.


This one is from "Noch Fünfzig Fabeln für Kinder" from Liepzig, Germany and looks to be from the 1800's. I can't find a date in it but Wikipedia lists 1837 as the publication date. The cover is falling off and I can't read what looks like German parables about animals but I treasure it.

This late 1880s edition of "Aesop's Fables" was one of my first vintage books. It came to me with my father's collection of childhood books. It was actually my grandfather's. It was "literally translated from the Greek" by Rev. Geo. Fyler Townsend, M.A. with illustrations by Harrison Weir and engravings by J. Greenaway.


"The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew" from the series by Margaret Sydney and first printed in 1881. This copy is from 1909. I love the youngest's name-- Phronsie (sophronsia). She's the one standing on the table here.

This is from one of my first thrifted children's books called "The Cuckoo Clock" by Mrs. Molesworth (LOL) and illustrated by Florence White Williams in 1927.


Before Walt Disney there was Carlo Collodi's "Pinocchio: The Story of a Puppet." My version was printed in Great Britain in 1939 with illustrations by Charles Folkard. (I also have a 1946 US version with lesser illustrations.)


My father was raised Quaker so I have many titles from and about The Religious Society of Friends including "The Children's Story Caravan" by Anna Pettit Broomell and illustrated by Katharine Richardson Wireman in 1935.

I just got this one from my dad last summer. It is "William Penn, Friendly Boy," (by Miriam e. Mason and illustrated by Lawrence Dresser, 1944) who was later the founder of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia and a Quaker.

This is "The Snow Queen" from a 1945 version of "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales" illustrated by Arthur Szyk. Another of my dad's books.

"Heidi" was one of my childhood books even though this copy was published in 1954. She usually has long blond braids but in this book she has a cute dark pixie cut.