I mentioned this recently in my post about The White Cat, and as I remembered the story from my childhood, I had to go hunt down the actual book so I could look at the illustrations again. It just came in, and it's so pretty. I remember so many of the stories inside, and how they were just gently strange and odd - not all of them the usual ones that appear in collections.
A Book of Fairy Tales
illustrated by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone
published by Playmore Inc in New York, and Dean & Son in London (hardcover, 1977)
Originally published as the following individual books:
Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales
Janet and Anne Grahame-Johnstone Gift Book of Fairy Tales
Gift Book of Fairy Tales
The White Cat
Stories included:
Little Red Riding Hood
Old Mother Goose Rhyme
Hop O' My Thumb
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The Three Little Pigs
Rumpelstiltskin
Jack and the Beanstalk
The Frog Prince
The Princess and the Pea
The White Cat
Little Ida's Flowers
Ole Luckoie, or The Dustman
Thumbelina
The Top and the Ball
The Darning Needle
Blockhead Hans
Sleeping Beauty
Puss in Boots
Tom Thumb
Hansel and Gretel
Beauty and the Beast
Babes in the Wood
They're so pretty.
What I remembered:
Ole Luckoie (Sandman) who tells the boy seven stories for seven nights, and on the last night, shows off his beautiful brother Death on his beautiful horse, where the good hear lovely stories in front of him, and the bad hear terrible tales behind his back, shrouded in his cloak.
The Princess and the Pea, standing in the rain, all soaked and black-haired and beautifully drapey.
The White Cat sequence where the Cavalier-dressed rain-soaked Prince draggles his pathetic way through the woods, to the doorway with the bellpull "hanging by a chain of diamonds," and then enters (dripping) into a blazing gold corridor illuminated by ghostly hands in sconces holding torches. (Really makes me wonder if whoever did the Phantom of the Opera movie had seen this illustration)
The White Cat and her retinue riding on monkeys.
The little fairy page boy giving serious side-eye to the goblin page boy with the Wicked Fairy, while the Fairy curses the baby Sleeping Beauty.
Blockhead Hans riding a goat, throwing mud at a reporter, while the Princess claps in delight.
Serious waif-fu Gretel kicking ass and taking names.
A sinister and dramatic Rumplestiltskin dancing around his campfire.
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