Old Christmas

by Randolph Caldecott, Randolph Caldecott (Illustrator)

Overview

"There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times." So begins Irving's classic recital of Christmas traditions in 19th-century England. Originally part of The Sketch Books of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which also included Irving's most famous stories, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Old Christmas depicts Irving's Christmas Eve trip by stagecoach to Yorkshire and the delightful holiday games and rituals he shared with his hosts at their home, Bracebridge Hall. Famed illustrator Randolph Caldecott's sketches provide a perfect complement to Irving's descriptions of holiday cheer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429016681
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	12/19/2008
Series:	Applewood Books
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

1783-1859

Randolph Caldecott (1846-86) was born in Chester, England, the son of a hatter. While still a child he showed his talent for drawing, modelling and carving, but he started his working life as a bank clerk before going to the Manchester School of Art at the age of twenty-one. He moved to London in search of commissions and produced drawings and cartoons for newspapers and journals before his first success with a set of one hundred and twenty drawings for Washington Irving's ""Old Christmas"" in 1876. It was his idea to produce a series of 'Toy Books' (picture books of a uniform size printed in colour), and this became the subject of the famous collaboration between the artist and the printer/engraver Edmund Evans. The first two - ""The House that Jack Built"" and ""The Diverting History of John Gilpin"" - were published in time for Christmas 1878 and the first printing of 10,000 copies sold out quickly. 'The very essence of all illustration for children's books', said"" The Times"" on Christmas Eve.
During the next seven years, Caldecott produced fourteen more Toy Books, illustrating nursery rhymes and songs with the interpretive skill that makes him such an important figure in the British picturebook tradition. He died, comparatively young, in St. Augustine, Florida.