Richard Doyle and Victorian Fairy Illustration

Richard Doyle was among the nineteenth-century British illustrators whose elaborate fairy imagery helped establish the pictorial language of small supernatural figures, flowers, woods and playful miniature worlds.

Victorian fairy illustration belongs to a later visual history of folklore. It should not be mistaken for evidence that every older regional fairy tradition described tiny winged beings.

Source trail: British Museum collections and nineteenth-century illustration history.

Related Journal: Fairies in British Folklore.