Biographical Materials

H. J. Ford, who is perhaps best known for his collaboration with Andrew Lang on the series of twelve Coloured Fairy Books (1889-1910), had a somewhat unusual career for an illustrator. Born in London, where he spent most of his life, he attended Repton and won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a first-class degree in classics. After graduation, he studied at the Slade school of Art with Alphonse Legros and the Bushey school of Art with Sir Hubert Herkomer. A friend of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, he exhibited history paintings and landscapes at the Royal Academy between 1892 and 1903. In addition creating illustrations for the Fairy Books, he also produced many historical subjects set from the middle ages to the eighteenth-century for Lang's The Red True Story Book (1895) and other works. He also illustrated The Arabian Nights Entertainments (1895) and Pilgrim's Progress (1921).

Fairy and Fantasy Illustrations

Historical Subjects

Bibliography

Fantastic Illustration and Design in Britain, 1850-1930. Providence, Rhode Island School of Design, 1979.

Lang, Andrew, Ed. The Red True Story Book. London: Longman, Green, 1895.

Lang, Andrew, Ed. The Pink Fairy Book. London: Longman, Green, 1901.

Lang, Andrew, Ed. The Yellow Fairy Book. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, n.d.; London: Longman, Green, 1894.

Peppin, Brigid. Fantasy: The Golden Age of Fantastic Illustration. New York: New American Library, 1976. (Also Watson-Guptill, 1975.)


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Last modified 22 February 2005