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Dame Wiggins of Lee & her Seven Wonderful Cats : John Ruskin : Illustrated 1885
Dame Wiggins of Lee & her Seven Wonderful Cats : John Ruskin : Illustrated 1885
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Dame Wiggins of Lee
By John Ruskin.
Published by George Allen, Kent, 1885. Hardback cover, 20 pages. Black & white woodcut illustrations, one per verse.
CONDITION
Overall fair condition - see photos. Sticker inside front cover. Foxing to top, fore and bottom edges, and some pages, commensurate with age. Nicks to spine. All pages present. No names or writing.
Those who know of John Ruskin (1819-1900) as Victorian Britain’s preeminent art critic and author of titles such as The Stones of Venice, Modern Painters and The Seven Lamps of Architecture may be surprised to discover among his publications this tale of Dame Wiggins and her cats.
First published in 1823, when Ruskin was four years old, it is believed to have been written by a Mrs Pearson, who has now disappeared from the annals of literary history. Ruskin loved this poem and described it in his autobiography as among ‘my calf milk of books’. He had it re-published in 1885 by his own publishing company, with four new illustrations by his friend Kate Greenaway (who gives her name to the Kate Greenaway medal, awarded annually by CILIP for distinguished illustration in a children’s book).
It tells of the adventures of Dame Wiggins’s extremely clever cats, who not only keep the mice and rats down but also attend school and go adventuring around the countryside, rescuing sick lambs and riding on the backs of geese.
