The Lady of Shalott
Author Alfred Tennyson British
Illustrator Howard Pyle American
Not on view
The illustrations in this work exemplify the influence of the English artists Randolph Caldecott and Walter Crane upon Pyle's early work. This was one of two books illustrated fully by Pyle, his first commissions of this type, both executed after his 1880 return to Wilmington, Delaware from New York where he had established himself as an illustrator between 1876 and 1879. Technically, these images demonstrate Pyle's influence in raising the quality of American book illustration and in pioneering the use of color printing techniques perfected in England by Edmund Evans. The binding is a fine example of a publisher's cover of a type often destroyed by later library rebinding.