April A to Z Blogging Theme:  Picture this! Traditional Fairy Tale Illustrators

Elinore Abbott, “The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces,” Grimms Fairy Tales, 1920.

A feminist and contributor to the Golden Era of American Illustration, Elinore Abbott studied at the School of Design for Women, the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and Howard Pyle’s Drexel Institute. Affluent and educated, a “New Woman” as defined by Henry James’ novel Daisy Miller, she and her artist husband each worked from their own studio in their Rose Valley, PA, home. Besides Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Abbott illustrated editions of Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales, Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Treasure Island, and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe along with features in Scribner’s, Harper’s and The Saturday Evening Post.

Elinore Abbott, “Two Brothers,” The Wild Swans and Other Stories, 1922.

Elinore Abbott, “The Two Kings’ Children,” Grimms’ Fairy Tales, 1920.