Crane, Walter. (1845 - 1915)
THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
London: Ward, Lock and Tyler [Endmund Evans, Engraver and Printer]. 1865. First Edition. Quarto. (9.44 x 7.19 inches; 240 x 183 mm). Unpaginated, 10 leaves. Six full-page color illustrations by Walter Crane and engraved by Edmund Evans. Color illustrated paper wrappers. Rebacked, with skillful archival repairs to corners and various tears, else fine. Considered to be one of the first toy books ever printed, the extremely scarce first of three "Painted Toy-Books" designed by Walter Crane, issued as part of the "New Shilling Series" in Fall 1865.Children's illustrated books became fashionable during the Victorian period with an emphasis on the artistic value of the work at a period when the middle and upper classes had funds to spend on books for their offspring. Brightly coloured and well-designed toy books in particular became extremely popular. When the English publishing houses Routledge and Warne and Ward, Lock and Tyler contracted with printer Edmund Evans in 1865 to provide toy books for a growing market, the toy books he printed "revolutionized the field of children's books." Edmund Evans (1826-1905) was an innovative and prolific printer of illustrated books in the Victorian era. He apprenticed at 14 to a wood engraver, and set
up his own printing and engraving business at Raquet Court, off Fleet Street, remaining there for nearly 50 years. He quickly made a reputation for colour work, doing a large business in yellow-back covers. His fine printing was often done in collaboration with Birket Foster and together they produced many classics of mid-Victorian illustrated books, published by Joseph Cundall, Charles Whittingham, Routledge, Ward, Lock & Tyler, and others. He printed the “Aunt Louisa’s Toy Books” series for Routledge and Warne, illustrated by Walter Crane, and ultimately produced all fifty of Crane’s books for children. He was Kate Greenaway’s first publisher and suggested that Randolph Caldecott try his hand at children’s books. With the “nursery triumverate” he created some of the most beautiful and well-known books in the history of children’s literature.
Walter Crane has been described as "an artistic polymath, capable of turning his hand to almost any task within the fields of the fine and decorative arts as practiced in late Victorian and Edwardian England" and as "one of the most ambitious British artists of the later nineteenth century." He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century. Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come. (21305)
Book Culture, Ethnicity & Gender Art & Design Literature & Classics