"Sylvie’s Music" by Harry Furniss — illustration for Lewis Carroll’s “The Tale of Sylvie and Bruno”

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Sylvie’s Music

Harry Furniss

Swain, engraver

1883

Illustration for Lewis Carroll’s The Tale of Sylvie and Bruno, 261

Source: Hathi Digital Library Trust version of a copy in the University of North Carolina Library

[Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Ray Dyer.

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Passage Illustrated

The figures of the children became vague and shadowy, like glimmering meteors: while their voices rang together in exquisite harmony as they sang: —

"For I think it is Love,
For I feel it is Love,
For I'm sure it is nothing but Love!"

Commentary

Carroll, who entitled this illustration “A Fairy-Duet,” chose the picture as the Frontispiece to his second volume, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), marking it there with the note “[See 304].” At that location the story is in its Chapter XIX, "A Fairy-Duet." Furniss’s depiction is strongly tinged with adult Romanticism and the Pre-Raphaelite love of Nature and floral exuberance. In the later abridged one-volume version of Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, by Dodgson’s youngest brother Edwin Dodgson [Anon.], a different illustration was chosen as Frontis., and the “Fairy-Duet” was placed in the text as noted, at 1904, 261. The relevant chapter there had been renamed ‘Sylvie’s Music’ [Cha XXII], and the same words appear at each page-head and over the artist’s depiction. — Ray Dyer

Bibliography

Carroll, Lewis. The Tale of Sylvie and Bruno . London: Macmillan & Co., c. 1904. Hathi Digital Library Trust version of a copy in the University of North Carolina Library. Web. 20 September 2016.

Created 21 September 2016

Last modified 29 January 2020