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My First Book
My First Book of Fairy Tales
Book by
- GenresChildrens
64 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1988
About the author
Margaret Tarrant
113 books5 followersMargaret Winifred Tarrant was the only child of Percy and Sarah Tarrant and she excelled at art from an early age.
She was so talented that at the age of 19 she received her first commission from JM Dent & Sons who used her illustrations for a new edition of Charles Kingsley's 'The Water Babies'.
This work earned her a string of other commissions such as 'Nursery Rhymes (1914 and 1923), 'Alice in Wonderland' (1916) and 'Hans Andersen's Fairy tales' (1917) for Ward, Lock and Co. She also designed postcards for Oxford University Press.
In addition she illustrated more than 20 books for George G. Harrap & Co between 1915 and 1929 and she began an even more important publishing relationship in 1920, the year in which she produced her first illustrations for The Medici Society.
She covered a range of subjects but her most popular were her fairies with which she could express her love for children, wild flowers and dance.
She was very much a free spirit herself, apparently flying along the country lanes around her home in Surrey on an ancient bicycle. And, of course, she leapt off regularly to sketch a flower she had spotted or on occasions to help a child paint.
When she died in 1959 she left a lasting legacy in her charming pictures that are still popular today as they enchant new generations into a secret fairy world.
Gerry Wolstenholme
December 2021
She was so talented that at the age of 19 she received her first commission from JM Dent & Sons who used her illustrations for a new edition of Charles Kingsley's 'The Water Babies'.
This work earned her a string of other commissions such as 'Nursery Rhymes (1914 and 1923), 'Alice in Wonderland' (1916) and 'Hans Andersen's Fairy tales' (1917) for Ward, Lock and Co. She also designed postcards for Oxford University Press.
In addition she illustrated more than 20 books for George G. Harrap & Co between 1915 and 1929 and she began an even more important publishing relationship in 1920, the year in which she produced her first illustrations for The Medici Society.
She covered a range of subjects but her most popular were her fairies with which she could express her love for children, wild flowers and dance.
She was very much a free spirit herself, apparently flying along the country lanes around her home in Surrey on an ancient bicycle. And, of course, she leapt off regularly to sketch a flower she had spotted or on occasions to help a child paint.
When she died in 1959 she left a lasting legacy in her charming pictures that are still popular today as they enchant new generations into a secret fairy world.
Gerry Wolstenholme
December 2021
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 22, 2020
A better edition than Traditional Fairy Tales also illustrated by this artist, Margaret Tarrant, mainly because the layout is better and there's more illustrations for the tales (for example, there's three for "Beauty and the Beast" in this one, whereas in the other edition there aren't as many).
Displaying 1 of 1 review