Andrew Lang is best remembered for his Fairy Books. Twelve books of fairy stories each distinguished by being given a colour in both title and binding, illustrated profusely and elaborately guilt stamped with versions of those illustrations on the cloth boards. I recently saw a rather glorious collection of all the fairy books at a bookfair and tweeted this photograph. He didn't stop there, Lang was prolific and all of it in a very high Victorian style.
So it was something of a surprise to see his name on a mid-Twentieth Century paperback from Faber and Faber with a distinctly "mid-twen-cen" cover design. But I was curious, so I picked it up and discovered that it was in fact illustrated quite heavily by none other than Edward Bawden. I think these have a rather uncharacteristic air of slight surrealism about them, a touch of lunacy in places. They are for the most part recognisable as being very Edward Bawden but there is an rough edge to these not often seen in his work.
