"Frontispiece to "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustrators —> Kate Greenaway —> Next]

Frontispiece to Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Kate Greenaway (1846-1901)

1888

Browning originally published his verse version of this well-known tale in his Dramatic Lyrics of 1842 (see Carpenter and Prichard 411). Under John Ruskin's guidance, Greenaway provided 35 illustrations for the new edition of 1889, which were then engraved and colour-printed by Edmund Evans. [Commentary continues below.]

Image capture, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the source and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print document. Click on the image for a larger picture.]

It was not an easy task. "Finished the rats, have you!" wrote Ruskin to her at one point, "but you ought to do dozens of rats in perspective with radiating tails" (qtd. in Speilmann and Layard 167). He was lecturing her about perspective at the time, and she was resisting him. Nevertheless, the edition was very well received. The artist Stacy Marks wrote to congratulate Greenaway on the result, saying "You have far exceeded my expectations in carrying through what must have been a strange and difficult task" (qtd. in Engen 157). Despite his reservations, Ruskin too praised it in the end, and "spoke of it as the grandest thing she had ever done" (Speilmann and Layard 171). Perhaps this was because of his involvement with it; but it is probably true.

The frontispiece shows the "joyous land" to which the piper has taken the children, as reported near the end of the poem by the little lame boy who was left behind. It is well thought out, both in composition and colour. The Pied Piper is not "pied" but dressed in scarlet, a splash of deep and dangerous colour, and concentrates on his piping as the innocent white-frocked children respond to his music, several of them dancing under a huge cherry tree laden with its evanescent blossom. Only a few of them seem to be boys. Three children hang or lean on the piper while he plays, while some others just sit listening. Two of the children with the piper look out at the reader: they clearly do not want to be taken from him. A cat stalks into view from stage right, looking sideways at a colourful bird perched on one of the girl's hands; another cat sits in the left-hand corner of the foreground, looking at a different bird. But in this paradise they would not harm the birds (would they?). The shades of colour used for the piper and the children are subtly blended in the blossom itself. In this way the whole pretty scene contains hints of the parents' sorrow for their lost children, who were with them for such a short time, before being lured away in retaliation for their refusal to keep their bargain with the piper.

Other illustrations from the book

Bibliography

Browning, Robert. The Pied Piper of Hamelin, with illustrations by Kate Greenaway. London and New York: Frederick Warne and Co., 1888. Web. 14 May 2013.

Carpenter, Humphrey, and Mari Prichard. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. Corrected ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1985. Print.

Engen, Rodney. Kate Greenaway: A Biography. New York: Schocken, 1981. Print.

Spielmann, M. H., and G. S. Layard. Kate Greenaway. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1905. Internet Archive. Web. 14 May 2013.

Last modified 18 June 2021