As Christmas nears it only seems appropriate to share with you one of the best loved Christmas classics illustrated by one of our most loved illustrators: A Christmas Carol written by Charles Dickens and illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Enjoy!
A Christmas Carol (download)
This week The Three Musketeers opens at Shakespeare Santa Cruz! To celebrate we are providing a wealth of resources this week for our Public Domain Hour, including an original film, the full two-part text of the novel, and the text of play adaptation from Selwyn House School.
Three Musketeers Play Adaptation by Selwyn House School (download)
Three Musketeers Volume 1 (download)
Three Musketeers Volume 2 (download)
Three Musketeers 1921 Film staring Douglas Fairbanks, George Siegmann, Eugene Pallette, and Léon Bary (download) or watch it below:
Next month Shakespeare Santa Cruz will begin it’s 2011 season with Comedy of Errors and, in August, Henry IV Part 1. So, for this week’s Public Domain Hour we want to share with you our favorite illustrated Shakespeare tale, and provide with you downloads to the the two Shakespeare tales being performed this summer.
Comedy of Errors (download)
Henry IV Part 1 (download)
Midsummer Night’s Dream Illustrated by Arthur Rackham (download)
The more I see Arthur Rackham’s illustrations the more impressed and entranced I become. For this week’s Public Domain Hour we are featuring a book we also carry in the store: The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Calla Editions (a division of Dover) has reprinted a facsimile edition of the this book available at Logos for $40.00
The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (download)
You may have noticed by now that I am a little bit obsessed with N.C. Wyeth. As I’m writing these posts I am preparing for a trip back East to Philadelphia, once home to Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish. Philadelphia has a remarkable library, the Free Library of Philadelphia, where you can see N.C. Wyeth paintings hanging on the wall in the basement level children’s section, or see original Arthur Rackham drawings on the top floor in the rare book room. This has got me thinking about the two different versions of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle illustrated by Arthur Rackham and N.C. Wyeth. We carry the Arthur Rackham version at logos, but I had not seen the N.C. Wyeth version until I discovered it accidentally on archive.org. Below you can read or download either version:
Rip Van Winkle Illustrated by Arthur Rackham (download) or pick up a copy available at Logos Books & Records for $12.95
Rip van Winkle Illustrated by N.C. Wyeth (download)
For this week’s Public Domain Hour we are featuring another wonderful book from Howard Pyle: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. This is Pyle’s most famous work and he both wrote and illustrated the text. Read or download it below:
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle (download)
There is no better way to follow Treasure Island than with a book about pirates! Howard Pyle’s Book of pirates : fiction, fact and fancy concerning the buccaneers and marooners of the Spanish Main is a wonderfully compiled collection of pirate stories and histories. Written and illustrated by Howard Pyle, this is a remarkable book. Pyle is best known for The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, but he is also responsible for popularizing the Brandywine School of illustration seen throughout turn of the century art. He taught such greats as N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish, cementing a sort of fantastic realism that changed illustration forever. Download or read his Book of Pirates below:
Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle (download)
Summer is almost here and it seems only fitting to start the beach season off with two lavishly illustrated island tales. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson are both illustrated by N.C. Wyeth one of America’s great and most nostalgic illustrators. Read them below or download one of many formats from Internet Archive.
Robinson Crusoe (download)
Treasure Island (download)
The Guardian UK recently did a feature on the illustrations from The Arabian Nights, so we thought as we return to our weekly Public Domain Hour we would start with a collection of downloadable illustrated editions from Walter Paget, Maxfield Parrish, and Edmund Dulac.
Download the PDFs here:
The Arabian nights (1907) Illustrated by Walter Paget
The Arabian nights : their best-known tales (c1909) Illustrated by Maxfield Parrish
Stories from the Arabian nights (1907) Illustrated by Edmund Dulac
Or see our favorite (Edmund Dulac’s) in the embedded reader below: