[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> Grimms' Tales —> Next]

Commentary: Roseken's Entrancing Vision of the Palace in the Meadow

The Elfin Grove. Throughout his later life Cruikshank was renowned for his sensitive depiction of fairy lore. Nowhere does he better capture the mood of an enchanted forest scene than in this illustration. [Vogler, No. 61, p. 138]

In the original Grimm folktale, Roseken, daughter of a woodsman, follows a little dog from the vicinity of her parents' cottage beyond the limits of the old oak grove to a hidden fairy meadow with a shining palace in the background. Although she joins the dancing elves for what she believes is just one night, in fact back in her village seven years have passed. Cruikshank captures the moment when she first spies the fairy palace: "But [she] was overjoyed to see a beautiful meadow, where flowers and shrubs of every kind grew upon the turf of softest green; gay butterflies flew about; the birds sang sweetly; and what was strangest, the prettiest little children sported about like fairies on all sides; some twining the flowers, and others dancing in rings upon the smooth turf beneath the trees."

Related Material

Other illustrations from this work (1823, 1826)

• Reverse of title-page and Half-title
• The Elves and The Shoemaker
• The King of the Golden Mountain
• Rumpel-Stilts-Kin
• Title-page illustration, Vol. I
• Title-page illustration, Vol. II
• The Young Giant and The Tailor
• The Goose Girl
• Pee Wit
• Cherry, or The Frog Bride
• The Nose

Bibliography

German Popular Stories. Ed. Edgar Taylor with an Introduction by John Ruskin. London: John Camden Hotten, nd.

Pritchett, V. S. "A Fine Rough English Diamond: [Review of] Graphic Works of George Cruikshank selected with an introduction and notes by Richard A. Vogler. Dover Publications, 168 pp. 279 illustrations, $7.95 (paper)." The New York Review of Books, 12 June 1980, pp. 6-8.

Taylor, Edgar (translator). German Popular Stories Translated from the Kinder Und Haus Marchen, Collected by M. M. Grimm, from Oral Tradition. Vol. One. London: Charles Baldwyn, 1823.

Taylor, Edgar (translator). German Popular Stories Translated from the Kinder Und Haus Marchen, Collected by M. M. Grimm, from Oral Tradition. Vol. Two. London: James Robins, 1826.

Vogler, Richard A. Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. New York: Dover, 1979.

---

Victorian
Web

Illus-
tration

George
Cruikshank

Grimms'
Tales

Next

Created 3 November 2026