CHRONICLES archives the successive newsletters.
A legend is a fairy tale told to men when men were sane. - G. K. Chesterton When I was small, I owned a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, illustrated by the author. I recall an oddly tense relationship with that book, due in large part to the illustrations,...
I had no idea. Like most people, I only thought I knew the Wonderful Wizard of Oz: the book, the musicals, the films, both old and recent... I had no idea that L. Frank Baum, the creator of Oz, had trod the Yellow Brick Road so many times, or that he had dutifully...
But don’t be alarmed, it already happened in 1894. The other day, I stumbled across a most extraordinary article in the August 1894 issue of Scribner’s Magazine, entitled The End of Books, by a certain Octave Uzanne, with illustrations by the prolific futurist...
A few months ago, a colleague and I were discussing topics – my colleague is an archaeology graduate, active in the art field, both old and new, therefore scientific and disciplined, two qualities which I don’t posses – so the interest we both find in common subjects...
1922, London: Edmund Dulac, pen in hand, is not inking an illustration, but writing an introduction. Impossible to guess at the exact circumstances surrounding the encounter of Edmund Dulac and an exhibition of children’s drawings that took place in London the year...
I’ve been meaning to write for some time and have finally resolved to do so following your recent escapade in Paraguay. (I do realize that it was several years ago, but I only just found out about it a couple of weeks ago.) We need to have a talk. Now, we’ve had a...
“With The Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A. D.” by Rudyard Kipling Surprises are usually found in the most unlikely places (Otherwise, they would hardly be surprises, would they?) The other day I stumbled on an unusual set of illustrations by Frank Xavier Leyendecker....
The Astonishing Fantasy Art of Nelly Littlehale Umbstaetter Serendipity is a wonderful thing; on occasion one’s eye is snagged by a chance image, opening up a whole new world. It happened to me a year or so ago, when I stumbled on the work of Nelly Littlehale...
A couple of years ago, I bought a book entitled The Coasts of Illusion, written by a certain Clark B. Firestone, published by Harper Brothers Publishers, New York & London, in 1924.[1] It is a curiously inspired book, given that it seems to be only time that the...
"Out of our deepest memories come the forgotten forms of the past, given new life by the living sentience of an ancient and eternal forest." - Robert Holdstock ‘How heavily That old wood sleeps in the sunshine; -- not a leaf Is twinkling, not a wing is seen to...
THE MEMORY OF TREES The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to...
Well, it would be an understatement to say it’s been a busy year. It seems each project is barely done when the next is clamouring to be undertaken. Everyone involved in the Hobbit worked very long hours to get it finished. There is still another one to go, and that...