The Blue Beard Picture Book illustrated by Walter Crane (1875)

Cover of the book The Bluebeard Picture Book by Walter Crane. The image depicts Lord Bluebeard wielding a key and looming over his wife, who is crouched near the floor in front of a door. States that there are 32 pages of design.
Illustration within Walter Crane’s The Bluebeard Picture Book. The illustration depicts Bluebeard’s wife collapsed on the stairwell with Bluebeard chasing her up and the wife’s sister looking for help. In the upper left corner, a text box reads: “‘Come down!’ cried Bluebeard, time is up! With many a sigh and moan, She prayed him for a minute more; he shouted still, Come down! O sister Anne, look out, look out! and do you nothing see? At last I see our brothers two come riding hastily. Now spare me, Bluebeard, —spare thy wife! but as the words were said

The Blue Beard Picture Book illustrated by Walter Crane and published in 1875 was one of several children's books Crane illustrated. This picture book included the fairy tales of Bluebeard, Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and ended with the ABCs. Unlike the other stories in this book, Bluebeard is a lesser-known children's story. The book's namesake fairytale, Bluebeard, follows the tale of the hated Lord Bluebeard and his new wife. While Bluebeard is away from his estate, his new wife takes his keys and opens the one door he forbade her from opening, only to find the dead bodies of Bluebeard's previous wives. When Bluebeard returns and discovers this, he chases her down to kill her too, but is intercepted and killed by his wife's brothers. The tale itself is allegedly meant to be a warning against "fatal curiosity" and, in Walter Crane's telling, a story parallel to Adam and Eve's.

The illustrator behind The Blue Beard Picture Book, Walter Crane, was born in Liverpool in 1845 and was a well-renowned artist of his time. During this time there were three household names regarding children's literature: Kate Greenaway, Randolph Caldecott, and Walter Crane (the least known of the three). Of the three, he is credited as being the creator of the modern-day picture book and is associated with several art movements, such as Pre-Raphaelitism, Aestheticism, Arts and Crafts, and Art Nouveau. Outside of his art, Crane was also known as a socialist who wished to bring art to the masses and "would have art to be not the privilege of the few, but the right of the many" (Konody 5).  

The story of Bluebeard has been around for at hundreds of years, but the first recorded book detailing the story of Bluebeard was published in what is modern-day France. The first published version of Bluebeard was Charles Perrault's Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passeé which was published in 1697. In his telling, Bluebeard is depicted in fairly orientalist illustrations as a middle eastern man who wielded a 'cimeter,' which is an older version of the word 'scimitar'. Scimitars are swords with curved blades associated with the middle east and the inclusion of this sword and these illustrations in Perrault's version of Bluebeard greatly influenced other versions of the story, which went on to have much more overt, and orientalist, middle eastern features in their depiction of Bluebeard. This contrasts with Crane's illustrations of Bluebeard in which he is interpreted as an old English lord. This then shows that in the near 200 years between Charles Perrault's Bluebeard and Walter Crane's Bluebeard, the public's view and understanding of the character Bluebeard had greatly shifted, perhaps to something more familiar to readers.

The origins of Bluebeard are a bit murky and the inspiration behind the figure of Lord Bluebeard is widely debated with several historical and fictional figures postured as potential precursors. One figure is 'Conomor the Accursed', a Breton king in the 6th century who killed his three wives and threatened to invade the land of Tréphine's father if she did not marry him, and finally killed her after she discovers a hidden room. Another tale thought to be Bluebeard's predecessor is the tale of Gilles de Rais, a French hero that served the famed Joan of Arc. After helping drive the English from France, he began kidnapping and killing over 50 young boys, using his newfound wealth and status as a means of defense. Although his story has much less in common, it is theorized that the story of Bluebeard may have been created to warn the peasantry to be wary around nobles, who had much more power than themselves. There are also many more theories regarding Bluebeard's origins ranging from stories from the Brothers Grimm to cautionary tales told by mothers to their daughters.

Special Collections has the 1897 copy of Walter Crane’s The Blue Beard Picture Book. It can be located in Special Collections at de Grummond NC1115 .C6x. To view the book, visit Special Collections Monday – Friday from 9:00am to 4:00pm.

For more information on this item, contact Ellen Ruffin at Ellen.Ruffin@usm.edu, or 601.266.6543.

Text by Hailey Pearson, Sophomore, History Major

**Items of the Month featured in 2023 and part of 2024 will be the work of Southern Miss students who took HON 303, a seminar held in Fall 2022 focusing on archives and special collections.

Sources

Bluebeard by Charles Perrault, https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/68/fairy-tales-and-other-traditional-stories/4858/blue-beard/

"Bluebeard A History of the Tale", https://www.pookpress.co.uk/project/bluebeard-history

The Art of Walter Crane by P.G. Konody

The Blue Beard Picture Book by Walter Crane

The Popular Story of Blue Beard; or, The Fatal Effects of Curiosity by J. Bailey

Victorian Horizons: The Reception of the Picture Books of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway by Anne Lundin