Illustrating ‘Once Upon A Time’

Once upon a time, Charles Perrault published a small volume of French fairy tales, many of which were appearing in print for the very first time. Alongside early versions of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and others, was a series of tiny engraved illustrations showing key moments in the stories. Perrault’s writing contributed to an evolving canon of European fairy tales, but the art that accompanied his tales was also significant, showing a changing relationship between the word and image in storytelling.

The fantastical and dramatic nature of fairy tales attracts all sorts of artists and interpretations, and illustrated collections were already being published before Perrault’s 1697 text. Illustrations would change with the style and taste of the day, but also with improvements in printing technology. This led to an explosion of work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The “Golden Age of Illustration,” as it was called, would not endure beyond the 1920s, but one of its common subjects – the fairy tale—continues to inspire new generations of artists to this day. 

Rauner Special Collections Library holds many illustrated books that highlight the artistic lineage of fairy tales. Three hundred years of illustration demonstrate not just the way artists represented the printed word, but the development of certain thematic trends within the stories. Like folk and fairy tales themselves, published works of art are pieces in conversation with each other. Artists know and draw inspiration from one another, and by looking at multiple iterations of the same or similar stories, one begins to see what scholar Elizabeth Newton describes as “networks of thought.”

This exhibit traces those networks in five well-known European fairy tales in Dartmouth Library’s collections. Over time, the illustrations for each story reveal through-lines of thought that either transform as they move from one artist to the next or repeat a visual theme again and again, adding to an artistic legacy by way of repetition and response. 

Curated by Scout Noffke.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Photos by Tom Remp.

Click the images below to explore!