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“The Disreputable Pond”

🎨 Maximilian Liebenwein (1907)

#GoldenAgeofIllustration
February 10, 2026 at 5:00 PM
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“Owls are howling, loons are crying.
Ghosts haunt the land. Ghosts haunt the sea,
moaning and sighing,
weeping and keening.”

(From “Svartedauden”, Black Death - 🎨&✍🏻 Theodor Kittelsen, 1900)

#wyrdwednesday #goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
Theodor Kittelsen’s Svartedauden (1900): The personified plague - A skeleta, crone-like figure passes through a desolate village, mountains looming like tombstones
February 11, 2026 at 2:35 PM
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When their ferry sunk on Lake Vättern in 1918, drowning artist John Bauer and his family, they said the Sea King had come to take his wife Ester Ellqvist-Bauer, She had modelled as “Agneta and the Merman” for John in 1911… a dark Scandinavian tale.

#WyrdWednesday #GoldenAgeofIllustration
Illustration by John Bauer: A regal woman in ornate dress, crowned with flowers, reaches toward a shadowy, elongated figure rising from the sea—a haunting, dreamlike encounter between human and otherworldly.
February 11, 2026 at 6:04 AM
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“But, unluckily, the griffin was not allowed to enjoy this innocent pleasure undisturbed.”

(Andrew Lang “The Red Book of Animal Stories”)

🎨 Henry Justice Ford (1899)

#goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
A mighty griffin, wings spread in wrath, claws a storm of destruction, as the one-eyed miners scatter in terror. The cave of the north wind looms behind, its chill breath fanning the chaos of the battle.
February 12, 2026 at 5:00 PM
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"Then they both laughed heartily, as if they already had the lad on the stake."

(After Asbjørnsen “Norwegian Folktales”)

🎨 Erik Werenskiold (1887)

#wyrdwednesday #goldenageofillustration #bookillustration
Erik Werenskiold’s 1887 ink drawing: A hunched, gnarled figure and a woman share a conspiratorial laugh in the gloom—‘as if they already had the lad on the stake.’ Dark folklore, darker smiles.
February 11, 2026 at 6:00 PM
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"He led him over roads and paths, over mountains and hills. And all the while he slept"

(Anna Wahlenberg “Tomtarna” from “Bland tomtar och troll”)

🎨 John Bauer (1909)

#wyrdwednesday #goldenageofillustration #johnbauer
John Bauer’s Tomtarna: A man, eyes closed, stumbles forward as a troll guides him through a spectral, moon-washed landscape—‘over roads and paths, over mountains and hills.
February 11, 2026 at 11:00 AM
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“A screech-owl with glowing eyes flew three times round her, and cried three times ‘Shu hu-hu.’”

(Grimm)

🎨 Arthur Rackham

#goldenageofillustration #booksky #bookillustration #owlishmonday
A screech-owl, its feathers etched like bark and its eyes twin embers, perches amid a tangle of skeletal branched in twilight—Arthur Rackham’s haunting omen from Jorinda and Joringel.
February 9, 2026 at 11:25 AM
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“Hey! up the chimney, lass! Hey after you!”

(Richard Harris Barham “The Ingoldsby Legends”)

🎨 Arthur Rackham (1898)

#goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
Two haggard crones and a coal-eyed damsel streak across the storm-wracked sky on broomsticks lead by their flying black cat familiars flying ahead, ragged cloaks billowing, as Rob Gilpin shouts ‘Hey! up the chimney, lass!’, mounting a broom-stick as well in Arthur Rackham’s 1898 illustration for The Ingoldsby Legends
February 13, 2026 at 6:01 AM
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A #SuperbOwl drawn by Walter Crane in 1892!

#goldenageofillustration #bookillustration
February 8, 2026 at 5:00 PM
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Maximilian Liebenwein "The Libyan Princess" (c 1900)

Part of an AustrianArt Nouveau-inspired series of prints illustrating the Legend of St George.

#goldenageofillustration
A princess, crowned and cloaked in ermine, sits in quiet contemplation beside a slumbering chameleon-like dragon, its scales glinting like emerald ice, as winter’s breath and silent owls bear witness to Maximilian Liebenwein’s dream of St. George’s legend.
February 10, 2026 at 6:59 AM
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“I do not know why it hurts me so, oh so much pain in my heart when I see the swans flying away.”

(Helena Nyblom “Svanhamnen”)

🎨 John Bauer

#wyrdwednesday #goldenageofillustration #bookillustration
John Bauer’s Ill till en saga: A golden-haired woman in ornate black robes watches swans take flight, their wings cutting through a sky of scattered hearts—‘oh so much pain in my heart when I see the swans flying away.’
February 11, 2026 at 9:00 PM
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St George Fighting Devils

🎨 Maximilian Liebenwein (1908)

#GoldenAgeofIllustration
Art Nouveau illustration of armoured St George ahorse, charging into a formation of devils defending themselves with medieval pole arms
February 10, 2026 at 11:00 AM
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“Then suddenly he saw Sir Mordred leaning on his sword among a great heap of dead men.”

(Andrew Lang “The Book of Romance”)

🎨 Henry Justice Ford (1919)

#goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
Sir Mordred, his armour blackened and his sword bloodied, looms over a battlefield strewn with the fallen. The storm above mirrors the chaos below as he stands, a lone figure amidst the wreckage of war.
February 12, 2026 at 11:00 AM
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“‘Oh, Queen of Snakes, Queen of Snakes, give me back my husband!” 

(Andrew Lang “The Olive Fairy Book”)

🎨 Henry Justice Ford (1907)

#goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
A woman in ornate, flowing robes pleads with a towering serpent, its coils rising like a regal spectre, as smaller snakes writhe at their feet. The air shimmers with an otherworldly glow, evoking the haunting plea: ‘Oh, Queen of Snakes, give me back my husband!
February 12, 2026 at 6:01 AM
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“The King’s only daughter had been carried off by a Dragon”

(Grimm)

🎨 Arthur Rackham

#goldenageofillustration #booksky #bookillustration
"A dragon, all sinew and scale, clutches the king’s daughter mid-flight, her hair a wild banner against the beast’s monstrous form, while a distant castle stands mute witness to her abduction—Arthur Rackham’s haunting vision of ‘The Four Clever Brothers’."
February 9, 2026 at 6:04 AM
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‘Oh! don’t be angry with me,’ cried the Princess, clasping her hands. ‘I’d rather marry all the dwarfs in the world than die in this horrible way.’

(“The Yellow Dwarf”, after Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy)

🎨 Walter Crane

#goldenageofillustration #booksky #bookillustration
February 8, 2026 at 6:03 AM
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“No wonder, sir;
But certainly a maid.”

(“The Tempest” 2.1)

🎨 Walter Crane

#goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #shakespearesunday
Ferdinand, wide-eyed and reverent, bows before Miranda, garbed in flowing gowns like a river of light, as spectral wings and shadowy boughs weave Shakespeare’s Tempest into Walter Crane’s haunting dream - with Prospero plotting in the shadows, of course.
February 8, 2026 at 12:10 PM
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"And Through Humility, And Sorrow, And Forgiveness, He Had Gone To His Redeemer's Rest."

(Charles Dickens “Hard Times”)

🎨 Charles S. Reinhart (1876)

#bookwormsat #goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
A somber, black-and-white illustration of a group of men carrying the lifeless body of Stephen Blackpool on a makeshift stretcher, his form draped in heavy cloth. One man raises a lantern to light the way through a desolate, mist-shrouded landscape, while mourners gather in silent vigil. The scene captures the grim finality of Blackpool’s death in Hard Times
February 7, 2026 at 11:35 AM
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“… and yet this cry is in the house, going upward from a wild figure on its knees.”

(Charles Dickens “Bleak House”)

🎨 Fred Barnard (1873)

#bookwormsat #goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
Honoria, Lady Dedlock, in the moment she learns her child lives—her hands clawing at her face as the walls of her gilded prison as shadows seem to swallow her whole—Fred Barnard’s haunting illustration of Honoria’s collapse in Bleak House. A black-and-white illustration of a woman kneeling on the floor, her long dress pooled around her. Her hands are pressed to her face in a gesture of anguish, her head bowed as if crushed by unseen forces. Rain or heavy shadows streak diagonally across the scene, amplifying the sense of despair. The artist’s signature and the date are visible in the lower corners.
February 7, 2026 at 6:03 AM
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"You will think I am beside myself; but as the light went out and I sank almost paralysed into an armchair, I saw two barred eyes looking at me!"

(E. and H. Heron “The Story of Yand Manor House”)

🎨 Benjamin Edwin Minns

#phantomsfriday #goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
A gaunt, besuited man slumps in an armchair, his face a mask of terror, as a towering, spectral figure looms behind him—its form a void, its eyes two bars of eerie light piercing the gloom. Benjamin Edwin Minns’ chilling illustration for The Story of Yand Manor House, where the darkness itself seems to watch, and the air hums with the weight of unseen dread.
February 6, 2026 at 6:28 AM
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“But the flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing.”

(Frances Hodgson Burnett “The Secret Garden”)

🎨 Charles Robinson

#goldenageofillustration #booksky #bookillustration
"Mary Lennox, a slight and solitary figure in a deep blue coat, stands poised atop the crumbling balustrade of the secret garden, her small hands clutching a hat as if it were a lifeline. Below, the skeletal arms of dormant roses twist around stone cherubs and a silent fountain, their forms half-swallowed by the garden’s wintry shroud—Charles Robinson’s haunting evocation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s hidden world, where neglect and wonder entwine like ivy on ancient walls."
February 5, 2026 at 5:00 PM
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“Eyes were looking down into his own, dark eyes full of hate and despair.”

(E. and H. Heron)

🎨 Benjamin Edwin Minns

#phantomsfriday #goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
A gaunt, besuited man recoils in his chair, his face upturned in horror, as a towering, diaphanous figure bends over him—its hollow eyes burning with hate and despair, its form wavering between the solid and the spectral. Benjamin Edwin Minns’ haunting illustration for Flaxman Low.
February 6, 2026 at 2:37 PM
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“So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates.”

(Oscar Wilde “The Happy Prince”)

🎨 Charles Robinson

#goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
"A cloaked figure, hunched in sorrow, holds a goblet as a robed child clings to them; beyond the arched balcony, a garden blooms in stark contrast to the shadowed lane where poverty lingers—a poignant illustration of Oscar Wilde’s 'The Happy Prince' by Charles Robinson."
February 5, 2026 at 6:18 AM
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“Some of them who had disappeared into the jungle came back presently driving a young iguanodon before them.”

(Arthur Conan Doyle “The Lost World”)

🎨 Harry Rountree (1912)

#wyrdwednesday #goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky
Harry Rountree’s prehistoric spectacle for The Lost World: A towering iguanodon, its massive form looming like a living mountain, is herded through the misty jungle by the indigenous inhabitants of Conan Doyle’s “Lost World”. The beast’s scaly hide and clawed feet are a stark contrast to the fragile human figures, their spears and torches mere sparks against the ancient might of a world long forgotten. Conan Doyle’s adventure made flesh—a moment where time itself seems to tremble.
February 4, 2026 at 6:17 AM
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“The Queen of the Ebony Islands”

🎨 Edmund Dulac

#goldenageofillustration #bookillustration
Edmund Dulac’s ‘The Queen of the Ebony Islands’: A sovereign of shadows and secrets, she stands draped in a cloak of night, her crimson and black robes swirling like the eddies of a dark river. At her side, a panther—black as polished obsidian—prows on a leash, its golden eyes mirroring the fire of her command. Her headdress glimmers with the cold light of distant stars, and her gown, patterned with writhing motifs, clings to her like a second skin of power.
February 3, 2026 at 11:00 AM