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Title-page and Vignette, Vol. Two.
George Cruikshank
Etching that "carefully follow[s] the originals drawn by Cruikshank"
6 ⅞ by 4 ⅜ inches (17.5 cm by 11.3 cm)
German Popular Stories, London: James Robins, 1826.
Photograph and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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The vignettes on the title pages of the two volumes imply that at some level Cruikshank understood the communal and oral nature of these tales. In the first (fig. 50), which Baldwyn published, a man sitting before a huge hearth reads to a laughing audience of old and young adults. . . . . Both rooms seem ancient — the first perhaps mediaeval, the second Jacobean. Both feature blazing fires, leaded windows, and a nighttime winter atmosphere. — Robert L. Patten, p. 248
Whereas on the title-page to Volume I a father reads to his family from a book, here an old woman is telling a story. These two illustrations thus contrast the written word with the oral narrative tradition. [Vogler, No. 56, p. 138]
The two title-page vignettes, taken together, thus mark the transition from an illiterate, orally transmitted folktale to a recorded version of the folktale aimed at a more educated, literate audience — a "readership" such as that purchasing these volumes. The first volume's vignette has figures that are largely male and grown-up; they receive the orally delivered text with a high degree of hilarity. The listeners in the second volume's title-page vignette, in contrast, are children in the grip of a suspenseful, orally-delivered narrative being told by a grandmother; her largely domestic experiences likely inform her tale.
Other illustrations from this work (1823, 1826)
German Popular Stories. Ed. Edgar Taylor with an Introduction by John Ruskin. London: John Camden Hotten, nd.
Patten, Robert L. George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 1992. Volume One: 1792-1835. Figure 50, p. 249.
Taylor, Edgar (translator). German Popular Stories Translated from the Kinder Und Haus Marchen, Collected by M. M. Grimm, from Oral Tradition. Vol. One. London: Charles Baldwyn, 1823.
Taylor, Edgar (translator). German Popular Stories Translated from the Kinder Und Haus Marchen, Collected by M. M. Grimm, from Oral Tradition. Vol. Two. London: James Robins, 1826.
Vogler, Richard A. Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. New York: Dover, 1979.
Created 31 October 2026