What is a Fairy and Arthur Rackham Part 1

A Fairy is considered to be a mythological being, not just from Anglo-Saxon myths, Celtic , Nordic and Germanic. Although there's a strong connection to these, you must remember that story telling, or better known as folklore, is dynamic wasn't in the written form. So there have been many cultural exchanges over the centuries. What about arabic tales like the thousand and one nights?

Later the term fairy, around the 13th century, became part of Western culture and led to the so called fairy tales. In these kind of stories, the fairy is represented similarly to versions of the Elves of JRR Tolkien, but get them using a magic wand to perform spells and add some dragonfly wings on their backs and you have a modern day Fairy.

Unfortunately the fairy is usually portrayed as a woman of a tiny stature with wings. Take tinker Bell as an example. :) But you can also portray fairies with a normal stature too like Peter Pan, also in J. M. Barrie's classic fairy tale. Isn't this one absolutely cool, done in 1906 by Arthur RAckham?

Harry Clarke's illustration of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is known for his rather macabre and grim tales, and quite easily associated to Halloween. Yes, it's that time of the year! Edgar Allan Poe died in a mysterious way when he was about forty and clearly claims , not just the status as one of the most famed classic writers, but of the number one Gothic Romantic Literature. Horror stories!? His the man, but the cool thing is having a look at Harry Clarke's illustrations of Poe's work. Although he worked with stained glass, I think his best work are in his classic fairy tale illustrations.