The second is a beautiful frontispiece from a children's novel called "Sinister Island Squadron - a Flying Story of the Pacific".
In the Guardian Weekend magazine's questionnaire, when people are asked what their superpower would be, they nearly always pick invisibility or flying, but mine would be to enter pictures like these.
Those are both lovely pictures. I can't believe women used to routinely wear hats that size - how did they get through doorways? Or crowded spaces? It must have been like wearing an umbrella on your head the whole time....
ReplyDeleteI think the illustration is stunning. You know, thanks to you, I now have a copy of Clarke Hutton's A Picture History of Britain. It's a treasure. £2.76 inc P&P, for a used, re-issued copy, in pristine condition.
ReplyDeleteThat's how the Australian writer Gerald Murnane talks about reading, about entering a text and wandering around within it, going to places the author never got time, or never thought, to write about.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fascinating wish.
ReplyDeleteFood for thought.
What a capital idea to live in a ideally animated world.
ReplyDeleteOr even be able to spend a week in each of one's favourite illustrator's worlds - I'll bet Peter and Jane's spare room at the top of that bright red carpet is something else!
Love the starry ship, though the Audrey Hepburn wannabe in the boat photograph also has its charm.
I'd love to live in Peter and Jane's world, where the sun always shines.
ReplyDeleteEntering fiction makes me think of Jasper Fforde's Tuesday Next, literary detective.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great superpower. And what a great hat. AND what a great big s mile on the lady in the hat! You ARE one of the top book blogs. Mine, anyway. Unmissable.
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