Today I will share illustrations from three books, illustrated by Anne Anderson, who, as you may now, often collaborated with her husband Alan Wright, so it is not always clear who has drawn the specific part of particular illustration. In general she was the one who did the majority of work.
We know he died in 1927 and we don’t know when she died, but I believe it was before 1940 (Wikipedia and other unreliable sources say it was 1930, but apparently she continued to work at least couple of years after her supposed death) what means this illustrations belong to Public domain.
Let’s start with Old English Nursery Rhymes. I found two different scans in Archive.org and illustrations in first looked like this:
Mistress Mary (too bright)
As you can see, you can hardly see anything, so I tried to enhance this image with my limited knowledge and (almost unlimited) enthusiasm.
This is a result:
Mistress Mary (improved image)
This one certainly looks better but it is still not good enough. And even if it looked great, I still had no idea how it suppose to look.
Fortunately I found another version with much better scans and lively colors of Anne Anderson finally started to show her impressive talent:
Mistress Mary
You got the picture? Great!
But!
If you have an eye for details, you will notice in this version girls feet are missing. The reason is library stamp by which it was covered and I decided to introduce Anne Anderson’s illustrations without this (‘this book belongs to our institution!’) addition. There was more (stamps, brown scotch tape and so on), but it is not my intention to provide HQ illustrations for your profitable projects. This blog is educational only.
So now we can enjoy the illustrations from Old English Nursery Rhymes with this imperfection in mind. We’ll check all color plates and only part of black and white illustrations which are originally incorporated in text in such way there was practically no way to look only at illustrations without heavy editing.
Let’s start at the beginning:
Old English Nursery Rhymes
Three Blind Mice
Vignette
Detail from Contents
Oranges and lemons
Hush a bye baby black and white detail
Hush a bye baby
Twinkle twinkle little star
Jack and Jill up
Jack and Jill down
Goosey goosey gander
Obviously there should be a goose too (it is top right, looking at the girl, just use your imagination)
What are little boys made of (witch)
What are little boys made of (boys)
Ride a cock horse
Sing a song o’sixpence
Sing a song o’sixpence (black and white detail)
Hickory dickory dock (clock)
Hickory dickory dock (girl)
Tom Tom the piper’s son
Here we go round the mulberry bush
Curly locks
After that song comes Mistress Mary already presented above, so we’ll continue with next song.
Old king Cole
Was a merry old soul
Pussy cat pussy cat
Three children sliding
Little Jack Horner (color)
Little Jack Horner (black and white)
- Carrion crow
Pat a cake pat a cake baker’s man
Simple Simon
Old English nursery rhymes Hush a bye baby
London bridge is falling down
Good king Wenceslas
Come follow me
Ding dong bell (left)
Ding dong bell (right)
Where are you going to
This blog post is becoming pretty long by now but there is more. I also have found two beautifully illustrated books for slightly older audience. First is medieval romance from France and it is considered as one of best parodies of the genre. You can press here to check the short summary of Aucassin and Nicolette and at the bottom of the same (pressed) article you will also find several downloadable texts (all free), including audio version. This is just another example of my kindness:)
Can we see the Anne Anderson’s illustrations now?
Chamber
Lady at the window
Escape
Search
Riding
The castle
Cute stuff, right? And funny too!
The last gem for this post is set of illustrations from Stories from Chaucer (rewritten by Emily Underdown). There are actually three stories: The Knight’s Tale, The Man of Law’s Tale and The Clerk of Oxford’s Tale, but we will not go into details.
Stories from Chaucer (cover)
In attendance on the knight was his son
Emily could be seen below
At once the fight began
The man of law was a discreet person
The bride entered the city
Once more she was adrift
Griselda was entirely reclothed
What think you of my new wife’s beauty
In this book published by Nelson in 1913 Anne Anderson is not credited as illustrator (she was not famous yet I suppose), but by now we can recognize her style even without credits on the covers. And for the all hawk eyes, there is also her signature on every illustration (down left or right)…
I hope you enjoyed this presentation of less know works of Anne Anderson, more known are already available through Wikimedia or even better Artpassions. (If somebody has reliable info about her death, please, let me know!)
Top Illustrations by Top Artists 