Plea of the Midsummer Fairies

Michael Frederick Halliday

1858

Etching in black ink on paper

5 7/8 x 4 5/16 inches (14.8 x 11 cm)

Private Collection

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This work was included as etching no. 20 in Passages of the Poems of Thomas Hood, Illustrated by the Junior Etching Club, in Thirty-Four Plates, and published in 1858 by Ernest Gambart & Co., 25 Berners Street, Oxford Street, London. It is Halliday's finest etched work. Fairy painting was a popular subject for Victorian artists at this time and it predates D. G. Rossetti’s famous designs for Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” of 1862. Thomas Hood’s poem “The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies” was initially published in 1827. — Dennis T. Lanigan