Hook, Stella Louise. Little People and their Home in Meadows, Woods, and Waters. Illustrated by Dan Beard and Harry Beard. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888.
pp. ix, 228 + 12 p of adverts. Half title, Frontis piece, gaurd paper, title, 24 illustrations. Bound in publisher’s green cloth binding, with silver, black and red ornamentation of crescent moon and moths and title. Title, author and publisher in black with gilt outline along spine, decorated by a silver spiderweb and spider. Binding is a little cocked and fragile, but intact. Some bumping to endband and corners. Overall GOOD to VERY GOOD condition.
“Where have the fairies gone? Long ago, you know, there were plenty of them to be found by the fortunate, hiding in the moss, or peeping out of flower-cups. “
A charming fusion of natural history and folklore, Little People and Their Homes in Meadows, Woods and Waters (1888) transforms butterflies, beetles, spiders, and moths into “fairies, elves, and brownies” inhabiting an unseen pastoral world. Illustrated by Dan and Harry Beard, Hook’s text renders the life cycles and habits of insects with a sense of otherworldly wonder, where metamorphosis becomes enchantment and the meadows themselves a stage for moonlit revels. At once a scientific primer and a work of pastoral whimsy, the book reveals Queen Nature’s dominion as a place where every humble creature partakes of magic.
The Beard Brothers as Illustrators
The illustrations in Little People and Their Homes in Meadows, Woods, and Waters are the work of Harry Beard (1840–1889) and his younger brother Daniel Carter Beard (1850–1941).
Harry Beard, son of the American genre painter James Henry Beard, began his career as a painter of portraits, landscapes, and animal studies before turning increasingly to book and periodical illustration. Exhibiting at the National Academy of Design and other venues in the 1870s, he gained particular notice for his lively depictions of animals, often rendered with humor and character. By the 1880s, Harry was a prolific illustrator for New York publishers, contributing to works such as The Sportsman’s Paradise (1887) and Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York (1891), as well as designing popular holiday cards for Louis Prang & Co. His career was cut short by his untimely death in 1889, though contemporary critics praised both his talent and geniality.
Daniel Carter Beard, by contrast, is best remembered as an illustrator, author, and social reformer whose later fame came as a founder of the Boy Scouts of America. Active in New York’s artistic circles from the 1870s, Dan Beard illustrated works ranging from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to numerous children’s and natural history titles, often infusing his drawings with wit and narrative energy. His collaboration with his brother Harry on Little People represents an intersection of their artistic talents at a moment when illustrated natural history books were enjoying wide popularity.
Together, the Beards’ illustrations animate Hook’s text with a blend of scientific observation and whimsical fancy, situating the volume firmly within the richly illustrated naturalist and juvenile literature of the late nineteenth century.