Mermaids
- Book Review,
by Elizabeth Ratisseau
Book Description
Frequently one wishes to say to another, "I wish you the best of everything." This book delivers this message with power and sincerity. Welleran Poltarnees has taken Snell¹s text and selected a painting or illustration for each wish, giving additional life to an already marvelous text. We assert, without exaggeration, that this is the nearly perfect gift book.
From the Inside Flap
This is a book created to be given. At its center is a peom bt Charles Snell which was written for, and Published in, 1914 as a small gift book. In it the giver, in a series of concrete images, extends the recipient many good wishes. In our volume, Snell's words are presented within borders made by Daniel Maclise for a book entitles Moore's Irish Melodies, published in 1846. We have selected images to accompany each wish. These are made by a great variety of painters and illustrators, and range over more than 150 years. This Is My Wish for You is in the tradition of ancient blessings, in which one tries, through the power of language, to throw a mantle of protection and beneficence over the receiver.
About the Author
Charles Livingston Snell was one of a group of talented authors and artists who created books for the P.F. Volland Company in the first two decades of our century. This publishing house specialized in gift and children's books, and was very successful in creating distinctive books with wide appeal. Harold Darling is a specialist in the power and resonance of printed images. He is especially interested in old children's books, paintings by obscure artists, and printed ephemera. His published books include Image and Maker (1984) and Bon Voyage: Souvenirs of the Golden Age of Travel (1990). Daniel Maclise (1806-1870) was a successful historical and portrait painter. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1840. From 1830 onward he emphasized book illustration. He drew meticulously with a lithographic pen. Among his best known books are: Fairy Legends (1826), Dickens' A Cricket on the Hearth (1845), and Moxon's Tennyson (1857).
Excerpted from Mermaids by Elizabeth Ratisseau. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
A mermaid may appear in various forms. In size she may be larger than a normal man or smaller, but usually, she is the same size. Her tail may be divided or single, of medium length, or quite long and coiling like a serpent's. She can change her forms, so she resembles an ordinary human, and live as an ordinary wife and careful mother for years, unless her husband breaks even accidentally some covenant between them. She will then disappear forever, sorrowing.
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