When I made my previous post, I did not know that Chris Riddell had earlier illustrated Tolkien in a similar anthology of illustrated extracts. Thanks to Trotter for pointing this volume out to me. And the earlier book turns out to be a far more interesting book than the one I had known about, for a number of reasons.
The Puffin Treasury of Children's Stories was published in 1996. No editor is given, but a likely reliable source credits the editing and the unsigned foreword to Anna Trenter. The book was retitled for the 1997 U.S. edition as The Viking Treasury of Children's Stories, and in a 1998 UK edition, published by Penguin Books, it became A Favourite Treasury of Children's Literature.
The volume contains thirty-six selections. Most are extracts, but eleven are self-contained short works. To the Tolkien fan, in addition to the extract from The Hobbit, there are other welcome things, including three items illustrated in color by Pauline Baynes. The first is an extract from T.H. White's The Once and Future King, which has four illustrations. The second is an extract from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, with six illustrations (which apparently were done for this specific volume, and are not reprints); and the third item is the short story "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde, with eleven illustrations.
There is also a short story by Tolkien's biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, one of his Mr. Majeika series, which is predominately made up of short novels. The short story originally appeared in a magazine for younger children, Puffin Flight, in 1988. And one other selection has some extra interest: "Spotty Powder" by Roald Dahl. It is described as one of several chapters cut from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because "there were too many naughty children." It was first published in Puffin Post in 1973.
The extract from The Hobbit is from Chapter 12, "Inside Information." Chris Riddell provides only three illustrations (elsewhere in this volume Riddell also illustrated an extract from The Wizard of Oz, and the story "Professor Branestawm's Christmas Tree" by Norman Hunter).
Here is a full-page Smaug:
Here is Bilbo stealing the cup:
And here is a dwarf (Balin) carrying Bilbo:
Riddell's illustrations were a feature of my childhood in The Edge Chronicles, a very strange fantasy series for children that he co-wrote with Paul Stewart - or supposedly for children since there are bizarre and disturbing events and characters more reminiscent of Vance and Leiber than Tolkien. In fact, I have often thought that Riddell would be ideally suited to illustrate Tales of the Dying Earth - he has the same combination of sardonicism and zaniness.
ReplyDeleteBut here, the hobbit looks too animal-like, the dwarf is just odd, and the dragon's posture and expression reminds me of a Thelwell pony for some reason (maybe the bulky body, and the look in the eyes). The main problem with drawing dragons is that unless you're careful they end up like horses.
For Tolkien's work there are probably no illustrations that equal his own, even though he admitted that he was no good with human figures and faces. There's something archaic yet timeless about his drawings for The Hobbit that matches the story perfectly. The book isn't the same without those colour plates. Hobbiton, the barrels, the conversation with Smaug . . .