[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN." (STRAHAN. 1871. NOW PUBLISHED BY BLACKIE AND SON)]
Nor must we forget a work very popular at this period, "Keeper in Search of His Master," although its illustrations are not its chief point.
According to a very interesting preface Mr. Andrew Tuer contributed to "The Leadenhall Series of Reprints of Forgotten Books for Children in 1813," "Dame Wiggins of Lee" was first issued by A. K. Newman and Co. of the Minerva Press. This book is perhaps better known than any of its date owing to Mr. Ruskin's reprint with additional verses by himself, and new designs by Miss Kate Greenaway supplementing the original cuts, which were re-engraved in facsimile by Mr. Hooper. Mr. Tuer attributes the design of these latter to R. Stennet (or Sinnet?), who illustrated also "Deborah Dent and her Donkey" and "Madame Figs' Gala." Newman issued many of these books, in conjunction with Messrs. Dean and Mundy, the direct ancestors of the firm of Dean and Son, still flourishing, and still engaged in providing cheap and attractive books for children. "The Gaping Wide-mouthed Waddling Frog" is another book of about this period, which Mr. Tuer included in his reprints. Among the many illustrated volumes which bear the imprint of A. K. Newman, and Dean and Mundy, are "A, Apple Pie," "Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos," "The House that Jack Built," "The Parent's Offering for a Good Child" (a very pompous and irritating series of dialogues), and others that are even more directly educational. In all these the engravings are in fairly correct outline, coloured with four to six washes of showy crimson lake, ultramarine, pale green, pale sepia, and gamboge.
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "GUTTA PERCHA WILLIE." BY ARTHUR HUGHES (STRAHAN. 1870. NOW PUBLISHED BY BLACKIE AND SON)]
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND." BY ARTHUR HUGHES (STRAHAN. 1869. NOW PUBLISHED BY BLACKIE AND SON)]
Even the dreary text need not have made the illustrators quite so dull, as we know that Randolph Caldecott would have made an illustrated "Bradshaw" amusing; but most of his earlier predecessors show no less power in making anything they touched "un-funny." Nor as art do their pictures interest you any more than as anecdotes.