Curioser and Curioser

And since I’m on the business of finding and sharing beloved childhood illustrations, here’s another set of pictures that I used to (and actually still do) like. Illustrator’s called Angi Petrescu-Tipărescu, book’s a 1976 Romanian translation of “Alice in Wonderland”. Unfortunately, my photographing of the illustrations is quite crap, but you get the idea. I really wanted to share these ones, they’re quite special (plus they come from the first Alice book I ever read ).

“Whoever This Slipper Fits…”

Going down the much-too-often invoked memory lane, I sometimes stumble upon long discarded things that once defined who I was. But perhaps that’s the wrong way to put it. It’s not “once defined”, oh no, they still do, only in a completely different way, snuggly fitted into the folds of my subconscious. Like, say, this oooold chapbook “Cinderella”. Anyone can tell how much I used to love a book when I was a kid by the tatter factor. This “Cinderella”, I loved it a lot. It’s a bilingual English/Romanian version, with little to indicate its origins. I don’t know when exactly it was published, though, by my memories of when it was purchased, I’d guess it was in the early 1990′s. No idea where it was issued, either. The back cover shows what seems to be the importer (Charme-Scott) and the publishing house (Brown Watson, England), whose webpage is currently under construction.

What I regret is not knowing who the illustrator is. Because the pictures in this tiny, pocket-sized book, were probably what made me prone to EGA and EGL in the first place. Those magnificent bustle dresses (and by the way), the Marie Antoinette style hairdos, the grand hats and bonnets – they were all I’d ever dreamed of, outfit-wise.

I’d love to get my hands on a copy less tattered than my own, to be able to enjoy the sight of the full illustrations again. But the drawings aren’t the only wonderful thing about this book. The story adaptation is pretty interesting as well; Cinderella sort of gets more personality than in the original version (or at least the one I know best, the one by the brothers Grimm), and her father is more… out there, more present, though admittedly not much, since that would ruin the plot. And hopping from one subject onto another, that makes me wish for a new film version of Cinderella. Perhaps a Tim Burton adaptation of the Grimm fairytale. xD With outfits inspired by the illustrations from my chapbook.