Sing a song for sixpence
Subtitle: the English picture book tradition and Randolph Caldecott
By: Brian Alderson.
Contributors: British Library.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press in association with the British Library
Published: 1986
Place of publication: Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 112
Subjects: Caldecott, Randolph, 1846-1886 -- Exhibitions.; Picture books for children -- England -- Bibliography -- Exhibitions.; Children's literature, English -- Illustrations -- Exhibitions.; Children -- Books and reading -- Great Britain -- Exhibitions.
Genres: Exhibitions.
Description: To commemorate the centenary of the death of the artist and illustrator Randolph Caldecott, Brian Alderson, noted historian of children's literature and children's book editor of The Times, has prepared for the British Library an exhibition designed to pay tribute to Caldecott's skills as a creator of picture books, which will run from October 1986. This book, incorporating a catalogue of the exhibition, with its many illustrations in colour and black and white, both demonstrates Caldecott's genius and provides a brief critical history of an important area of children's book publishing. Comedy, storytelling and graphic exuberance are all part of the great tradition of book illustration that runs from Hogarth and Rowlandson down to the present day, and Caldecott's special genius was to have embodied these qualities in the subjects he chose. Together with an appraisal of those who influenced Caldecott and the effect he had on later generations of illustrators, Brian Alderson explains the relationship between pictures and text, techniques (wood-cuts, wood-engraving, intaglio printing), the effect of industrialisation on the picture book and the subsequent development of book illustration.
Notes: Bibliography: p. 110-111.
"Catalogue of an exhibition held at the British Library, October 1986-January 1987"--t.p. verso.
Includes index.