Walter Crane: Books in Colour [2 voll.]

A definitive two-volume catalogue raisonné, offering a full reconsideration of Walter Crane’s oeuvre, achievement, and legacy

Born in 1845, Walter Crane was the first professional illustrator to proudly apply himself to commercial arts in the rising age of mechanical reproduction. He reformed the way his contemporaries perceived books, transforming them into influential, political, and powerful objects to be pondered with intent and produced with art. Cheap as they were, they could still shape society, instil ideas, and conjure worlds of possibility. His picture books served as a tool of popular education, helping to emancipate less well-to-do children and form their taste and personalities. They were of such artistic quality that they entered the homes of intellectuals such as Oscar Wilde and Dame Ellen Terry.

This publication catalogues almost 450 titles illustrated by the artist, 274 of which have been newly discovered by Francesca Tancini, including unpublished illustrator’s diaries and account books and printers’ and publishers’ ledgers and archives. This catalogue offers a completely new picture of Crane and the publishing and artistic world in which he operated and excelled.

Art and illustration historian Francesca Tancini is a researcher and visiting fellow at Newcastle University. She has worked as a librarian and co-curated, with Hope Mayo, The World of Walter Crane, at the Houghton Library, Harvard (2015).