Beschreibung
Ioannes und die Geister
Ghost and Fairy Tales - Precious Collector’s Edition
by Kay Nielsen, Arthur Quiller-Couch, and others
with 44 beautiful illustrations by Kay Nielsen
translated for the first time from English and French into German and retold by Ulrich Taschow
178 pages, 44 illustrations, published in 2016, laminated hardcover, series: avox fantasia, ISBN: 978-3-936979-16-9
Target groups
Children and young readers aged 4 and up, lovers of sophisticated artistic illustrations, lovers of fairy tales, ghost stories, fantastic stories, and historical children’s books
This beautiful volume is the first German edition of Kay Nielsen’s precious debut work. Nielsen (1886-1957) was perhaps the most original and brilliant illustrator and artist of the Golden Age of children’s book illustration; until now, this work had been accessible only to a few as a rare and extremely valuable collector’s item in English.
The exclusive volume brings together the finest English and French literary fairy tales in the genre of ghost and fairy tales, translated into German for the first time and sensitively retold by Ulrich Taschow. The illustrations were painstakingly restored and now shine in renewed splendor.
When two geniuses meet creatively, it becomes a rare moment in cultural history. Such a moment arose when the brilliant, though still entirely unknown, Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen and the already world-famous English writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) met in 1912 to create this collection of ghost and fairy tales. To do so, both used an unusual and unique method:
Nielsen, following his visionary instinct for the fairy-like, set the guiding theme for his illustrations, while Quiller-Couch, with his exceptional feeling for the unusual, selected the appropriate tales. He chose historical and contemporary English and French ghost and fairy tales by important writers, many of them little known or unknown at the time, and also added a beautiful ghost story of his own, Ioannes and the Ghosts.
With works by Anne-Claude-Philippe, Comte de Caylus, Andrew Lang, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, John Tibbitts, Arthur Quiller-Couch, and Francis Money-Coutts, Baron Lord Latymer, not only the finest literature in the genre of literary fairy tales came together. With his highly imaginative, striking, and varied collection, Quiller-Couch also gave the young Nielsen the ideal source of inspiration to prove his illustrative skill to a broad public for the first time.
The result was one of the most beautiful collections of illustrations and ghost and fairy tales in literary history, thanks both to the originality and enchanting grace of the drawings by the great master Kay Nielsen and to the high quality of the literary tales themselves.
Contents
List of Illustrations 9
Princess Minon-Minette 11
(by Anne-Claude-Philippe, Comte de Caylus)
The Twelve Dancing Princesses 47
(freely after a version by Andrew Lang and the Brothers Grimm)
Felicia and the Pot of Pinks 73
(by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy)
The Man Who Never Laughed Again 95
(freely after a version by Charles John Tibbitts from The Thousand and One Nights)
Ioannes and the Ghosts 112
(freely after Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch)
Rosanella, or the Inconstant Prince 135
(freely after Anne-Claude-Philippe, Comte de Caylus)
The Queen’s Violet 152
(freely after Francis Money-Coutts, fifth Baron Lord Latymer)
Biographical Epilogue on Kay Nielsen and His Work 166
Portrait of Kay Nielsen 168
Kay Nielsen - Life Story in His Own Words 169
(Autobiography, Boston 1930)
Kay Nielsen - An Essay 172
(by Martin Birnbaum, New York 1919)
