The Rose Elf

Arthur Gaskin

Wood-engraving by Gaskin

6 x 3½ inches

Andersen, Hans Christian, Stories and Fairy Tales, Vol 1, frontispiece

A delicate illustration to one of the lesser-known fairy tales. It shows the moment when the elf finds the girl ‘slumbering’ with her head on the flower-pot and slips ‘into her ear’ stories of ‘the evening in the summer house’ (15). A moment of languor, the image draws on the example of Rossetti’s and Burne-Jones’s pale and introspective maidens.

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Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

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