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Commentary

In his Fairy Library, published between 1853 and 1864, George Cruikshank illustrated and rewrote "Le Petit Poucet," "Cendrillon," and "Le chat botté." Although his witty engravings remain faithful to the texts, his rewriting considerably alters them. A reformed alcoholic, he preaches temperance in "Hop O' My Thumb" and recasts the tender Cinderella as pitiless prohibitionist. He transforms all three tales to suit his moral fancies. The woodcutter becomes an alcoholic and gambling count who loses everything because of his vices, and Puss in Boots restores the wealth of the aristocratic miller, the legitimate owner of the ogre's vast estates. — Project Muse, "George Cruikshank's Graphic and Textual Reactions to Mother Goose."

Cruikshank's fairy tales are principally famous for two things: their illustrations and for Cruikshank's tendency to append a sometimes rather spurious temperance moral. Cruikshank was widely regarded as the foremost illustrator of books of his day — which can be judged by the three etchings that survive in this volume: opposite pp.14, 16 and 22. His willingness to insert anti-alcohol lessons into the fairy stories was far more contentious. Hop O' My Thumb's father loses his fortune through drink; the giant in Jack and the Bean Stalk owes his (quite literal) downfall to drink (0021: p.31); and the Fairy Godmother insists that Cinderella's wedding is celebrated by the destruction of all the intoxicating liquor in the kingdom. All this led to harsh words from Charles Dickens. In 1853, in his magazine Household Words, Dickens attacked his former collaborator for tampering with the fairy tales and forcing them into tawdry service as propaganda for a worldly cause, whatever it may have been. 'In an utilitarian age, of all other times,' Dickens wrote, 'it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected', for 'a nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will, hold a great place under the sun' (Dickens 1853). Cruikshank responded in the form of a litter signed 'Hop o' my Thumb' which appeared in his own work, George Cruikshank's Magazine in February 1854 (he was also responding Dickens' 'Whole Hogs', an earlier article in Household Words (3 (1851), 505-7), which had attacked all fanaticism, whether for temperance, vegetarianism or any other cause). And Cruikshank was still perhaps nursing a grievance when he appended a short essay on fairy tales to his Puss in Boots: pp. 28-30. Here, invoking his own childhood and that of William Shakespeare, he sets out his credentials as a lover of fairy tales and of fantasy, which answers some of Dickens' charges, and assures his readers that fairies, giants and ogres do not exist in real life. In insisting on this, he can be seen as answering the charge laid by John Locke as long ago as 1693 in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. '[B]e sure to preserve his tender mind from all impressions and notions of sprites and goblins, or any fearful apprehensions in the dark', wrote Locke, for otherwise 'are stamped upon their minds ideas that follow them with terror and affrightment' (138). However, that Cruikshank had been chastened by his run-in with Dickens is perhaps evident in the lack of anti-alcohol polemic anywhere in Puss in Boots. (For more on the Dickens-Cruikshank controversy, see [Harry] Stone 1973-74 and [Michael] Kotzin 1972). — The Hockliffe Project

From 1847 to the end of his life, Cruikshank attended multiple temperance meetings across the country even serving on the board of the London Temperance League. He preached sermons on the benefits of temperance as well as promoting the cause through his illustrations in books such as The Bottle (1847) and The Drunkard's Children (1848) (please see catalogue links below). Temperance was a cause dear to Cruikshank's heart, possibly because his own father died after a drinking competition in 1811, leaving him, at the age of nineteen, the principal breadwinner for the family. Cruikshank was upset by Dickens' public opposition to what he saw as the extremes of the temperance movement. When Cruikshank first published these beautifully illustrated fairy tale books to which he added texts attributing all the violence and misery in the stories to drink, Dickens protested in his weekly magazine Household Words (1 October 1853). In Dickens' leader entitled "Frauds on the Fairies" he decries Cruikshank's attempts to 'propagate the doctrines of Total Abstinence, Prohibition of the sale of spirituous liquors, Free Trade and Popular Education. For the introduction of these topics, he [Cruikshank] has altered the text of a fairy story and against his right to do any such thing we protest with all our might and main… He has no greater moral justice in altering the harmless little books than we should have altering his best etchings. . . .' Dickens' view prevailed. This led Cruikshank to profess on Dickens' death that 'One of our greatest enemies gone.' Furthermore, he went on to later claim, in a letter to the Times published Dec. 30, 1871 that it had been he, and not Dickens, who had come up with the characters and plot for Oliver Twist. — Guildhall Library blog, "A Gem from Guildhall Library's Shelves: George Cruikshank's Fairy Library by George Cruikshank published by Routledge in London (c. 1870)." 8 August 2014.

The ornate vignette surrounds the four original titles in the Fairy Library (1853-64), as opposed to the usual practice of having a vignetted thumbnail in the centre of the otherwise unadorned title-page. The border relates the natural world of flowers (lupins) and toadstools to the supernatural world of fairies — of whom there are five: two writers or scribes (upper right and left), two engaged readers (lower right and left), and a "conducting" female fairy whose wings suggest an artist's palette. The three fairies in the upper register are closely juxtaposed with the name of the illustrator and story-teller in the print medium, whereas the reading fairies are closely juxtaposed against the image of Mother Goose, the wise woman with the crutch who has the rapt attention of five boys and four girls, two of whom are themselves approaching adulthood and therefore motherhood.

Bibliography

British Library. "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library." Romantics and Victorians. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/george-cruikshanks-fairy-library

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Cruikshank, George. George Cruikshank's Fairy Library: "Hop-O'-My-Thumb," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots". London: George Bell, 1865.

Guildhall Library blog. "A Gem from Guildhall Library's Shelves: George Cruikshank's Fairy Library by George Cruikshank published by Routledge in London (c. 1870)." 8 August 2014. https://guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/a-gem-from-guildhall-librarys-shelves-george-cruikshanks-fairy-library-by-george-cruikshank-published-by-routledge-in-london-c1870/

The Hockliffe Project. "Fables and Fairy Tales. 0038A: George Cruikshank, Puss in Boots." http://hockliffe.dmu.ac.uk/items/0038A.html

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. "George Cruikshank." http://library.tulane.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/fairy_tales/george_cruikshank

Hubert, Judd D. "George Cruikshank's Graphic and Textual Reactions to Mother Goose." Marvels & Tales, Volume 25, Number 2, 2011 (pp. 286-297). Project Muse. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/462736/pdf

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.

Toledo Museum. "George Cruikshank's "Hop-O'-My-thumb." Story-Telling in Miniature. ​ http://www.toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/online-catalogues/storytelling-in-miniature/118/

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