Laurence Housman's Fairy Tales

Of the three writing Housman siblings, Laurence Housman (1865-1959) was by far the most prolific. His brother A.E. Housman (1859-1936)  won greater renown for his poetry, while his sister, Clemence Housman (1861-1954) was best-known as a wood-engraver, though she wrote a small amount of superior fiction (including The Were-Wolf and The Life of Sir Aglovale de Galis). 

Laurence's short stories range among various types and are collected in around a dozen volumes published over several decades. His earliest fiction interests me the most, and that includes his own fairy tales, and his more serious and artistic fantasies.  Here I will discuss only the early fairy tales.

Laurence collected some thirty-five fairy-tales in four volumes, A Farm in Fairyland (1894), The House of Joy (1895), The Field of Clover (1898), and The Blue Moon (1904). In November 1922, when the original editions were long out-of-print, Laurence published a two volume set containing thirty of the tales, Moonshine & Clover and A Doorway in Fairyland. Of the five unreprinted tales, four come from his first book, and one from his second. Clearly Laurence believed he got better as he wrote more, and that seems to be the case, as his better tales dominate the two later collections. As fairy-tales, Laurence's stories are individualistic, and readable if, for the most part, not exceptional. But some of the better ones were selected for reprint collections like The Rat-Catcher's Daughter (1974), containing twelve stories, with illustrations by Julia Noonan, and Moonlight and Fairyland (1978), containing eleven stories, with illustrations by Pauline Martin. 

One aspect about the original editions that make them exceptional (and very desirable) is the gorgeous design, and the artwork wood-engraved by Laurence's sister Clemence.  Many of these illustrations are reprinted in the two 1922 collections. 

Here is the binding of The Field of Clover, followed by the title-page spread from The Blue Moon, and one of Clemence's engravings for "Happy Returns" in The House of Joy.