The Magic Carpet and Other Tales

by Ellen Douglas (Adapter), Walter Anderson (Illustrator)

The fabulous illustrations of Walter Anderson brought forth this brilliant retelling of twenty tales from world literature, a book first published in 1987 and now back into print at the demand of appreciators of Ellen Douglas's fiction and of Anderson's art. Here for a wide range of readers Douglas recounts fairy tales, classical stories, myths, and adventure stories that inspired Anderson to create these enchanting pictures. Douglas's special gift for storytelling weaves an alluring spell that is intensified by twenty-four of Anderson's most spectacular works. These are reproduced in full color and are adapted from his linoleum block prints of tremendous size (18 in. x 6 ft.) and hand colored by his niece Adele Anderson Lawton. This indeed is a document of art's power to excite the imagination. What is the elusive quality in narrative that draws out the illustrator's response? And the quality in illustration that compels the teller of stories to elucidate? Just as great tales piqued Anderson to create these fantastical pictures, his illustrations motivated Douglas to take them back to their source, the word. From the Brothers Grimm, Ovid, Malory, Burton, Perrault, and other great storytellers she has retold her refreshingly appealing versions of Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Magic Carpet, The Fisherman and the Genie, Sinbad and the Roc, Rapunzel, The Six Swans, Thumbelina, The Sleeping Beauty, The Frog Prince, The White Cat, Puss in Boots, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Bremen Town Musicians, Jack the Giant Killer, The Birth and Coronation of Arthur, Cupid and Psyche, Androcles and the Lion, Europa and the Bull, and The Golden Apples of the Hesperides. In recounting them anew she gives them fresh insights while retaining their eternal charm.

Ellen Douglas is the award-winning author of five novels and a collection of stories. Among her books are "Black Cloud, White Cloud, Apostles of Light" (University Press of Mississippi), and "Can't Quit You, Baby."

Walter Anderson (1903-1965) was the reclusive Mississippi Gulf Coast artist whose legacy of art has been celebrated in many exhibitions and in films and books.

186 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1987

About the author

Ellen Douglas is the pseudonym for Josephine Haxton, whose family roots extend back to the earliest settlements in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Her fiction has won many prizes, including the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, the Hillsdale Prize for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award.

Reviews

[Teresa]

I read this book because of the illustrations, not typical of me in general, but typical of my obsession with the artist Walter Inglis Anderson. It's fitting though, because this volume exists to showcase some of the many block prints Anderson created of scenes from mythological, folk- and fairy tales.

In her introduction Ellen Douglas writes of the tales she was told and read as a child, reveling in the unfamiliar vocabulary they contained and she keeps to this standard with her own retellings. My favorites are her brilliant retellings of Scheherazade and Grimm tales, the understated, matter-of-fact vocabulary dealing with sex and violence reminding me of my own childhood readings. But it's "Androcles and the Lion" and "The Golden Apples" that she truly makes her own. I'm not sure the latter works as a tale for a child, though an older child might be intrigued enough to find out more about Heracles. Included in "The White Cat" (the one story I don't remember reading before) is a smile-inducing nod to Anderson's own Robinson: The Pleasant History of an Unusual Cat.

And the reproductions of the block prints I wanted this book for? They are gorgeous, more than twenty of them, large enough to see Anderson's wonderful details and colorful enough to capture a child's attention.

(While looking up some biographical details for Ellen Douglas, I found a photo of her with Walker Percy (another interest of mine) at her NYT obituary.)

[James]

Enchanting retellings of classic fairytales, Ellen Douglas gives light to a new generation of readers who haven't discovered them, or are too young to read the original. From Ovid to the Brothers Grimm and Scheherazade's tales told through the One Thousand and One Nights, this selection was based on the illustrations of Walter Anderson. Normally the tales are told first, and the illustrations follow, but here Douglas gives voice to the imagination of the Mississippi artist Walter Anderson. The pictures are the best part of the book--not to slight Ms. Douglas--and Anderson's style is at once mythic and intimate, present and timeless. Above all, he showed the archetypes of the imagination. All of the original illustrations are linoleum block prints--very large at that--he pressed, normally, on wallpaper. I have had the privilege of seeing many of them in person, and they are reproduced here successfully. There is a link below to see some of Anderson's prints. Click on the individual pictures to see larger images:

http://www.walterandersonmuseum.org/a...

[Judi Jetson]

Best book of stories ever, gorgeous illustrations!