Boys and Girls of Bookland - Pictured by Jessie Willcox Smith

Boys and Girls of Bookland – Pictured by Jessie Willcox Smith’ is a charming children’s book containing eleven stories of famous child characters in fiction adapted by Nora Archibald Smith. The stories included are David Copperfield, Little Women, Jackanapes, Hans Brinker, Alice in Wonderland, The Little Lame Prince, Heidi – The Alpine Rose, Mowgli, Little Nell and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. This book was originally published in 1923 and contains eleven full colour plates by Jessie Willcox Smith.

Written by Charles Dodgson (1832-1898), this well-received author is best known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll. A polymath who is arguably best known as an author, but who also worked as a mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer, his most famous works are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Dodgson was a prolific writer who contributed children’s stories, mathematical theses and political pamphlets to a variety of magazines.

This wonderful book is beautifully pictured by Jessie Willcox Smith, born in Philadelphia, USA. In 1894 she took classes under the artist Howard Pyle and embarked on a career as an illustrator. She quickly became a prolific and successful artist best-known for her Good Housekeeping covers and her twelve illustrations for Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1916).