My third acquisition from Beehive Books is their gorgeous Illuminated Edition of the Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, which collects 2 of his short story anthologies. I have actually only read the picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde so I'm not sure what to expect from the stories, but having taken a look at this edition's art I think it's safe to say that they're closer in tone to the brothers Grimm than they are to Dunsany.
The Book Depository previously stated that they'd be shipping this in only about 5 months (or so?) from now, but then, without notice, released the book anyway and then shipped it to me. I'm not complaining mind you, or if I am, then only about some of the vaguer elements of my favourite online store.
There's nothing to complain about in ere because this stuff is again pretty as hell, even though I'm not too fond of yellow.
So, the book collects Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Tales, and his A House of Pomegranates, together making up about 9 stories.
The foreword this time is by Michael Cunningham, and I won't read it until I actually intend to finish the stories, so you'll just have to leave it up to your imaginations for now.
There's I think even more art than is usual for the Illuminated Editions.
Oh and by the way; in the picture below I've put the Penguin Popular Classics edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray on top of the Fairy Tales book for size comparison.
The colours are pretty limited throughout, though the art itself is pretty nice.
The artist Yuko Shimizu set out to make her art deliberately mysterious, and as a result some of the artwork doesn't actually illustrate scenes from the stories they're from, or instead they're from only a tiny detail of the narrative.
As usual the note on the artist, a note by the artist herself, and the note one the author are all quite Illuminating... Ha ha ha.
Probably the most important information to mention here is that it isn't THIS Yuko Shimizu that created Hello Kitty.
With thanks to The Ink-Stained Beard for helping me out with advice and technical support with the picture-taking, as I was having a lot of trouble with their quality.
I've checked the Beehive Books site just now, and there's already 3 new Illuminated Editions you can pre-order and which'll release in June 2020.
First up the orange book is Margaret Cavendish's the Blazing World, which was originally published in 1666... which, damn, is a year before even Paradise Lost... fancy that *wondering*, and is a forerunner of the sci-fi genre and a Utopian novel.
The green is Peter pan, which I was pretty much expecting.
The white then is a bit of a surprise as it is Crime and Punishment, and it has a colour scheme which is making me drool. It surprised me a little bit as I'm wondering if this book'll differentiate in thickness much more than the other books already out. Crime and punishment is substantially thicker than the other books in the series and it will be only a mild bit of a shame, but a shame nonetheless, to have a book twice the size in width next to the other ones. I guess this means that the Illuminated Editions will cover a much broader range than previously thought, and that after a while, and a lot of expense!, the size will be so varied that this little niggle will fall by the wayside.
Also, according to the site will have the Constance Garnett translation, and which bums me out a little as I was hoping the newer translation from Pevear and Volokhosnky would be used for this. But, I guess if it's good enough for Joseph Conrad it'll do for me as well.
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