The Blue Fairy Book - Illustrated by H. J. Ford and G. P. Jacomb Hood. Andrew Lang

      Biography

      of

      Andrew Lang

      Andrew Lang was born in Selkirk, Scotland in 1844. He attended the University of St. Andrews – which now holds the Andrew Lang lecture series in his honour – and Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied classical languages and literature. In 1875, Lang moved to London to pursue journalism. He became contributing editor of Longman’s Magazine, and published widely in a number of other publications, including Cornhill Magazine, MacMillan’s, The Daily Post, Fortnightly Review, the Overland Mail, Fraser’s and Time magazine. He also wrote a good amount of fiction, much of it inspired by the folklore and myth of Scottish history. His Fairy Book series (1889-1910) remains popular to this day. Lang died in 1912, while living in Aberdeen, Scotland.

      Biography

      of

H. J. Ford

      Henry Justice Ford was born in London, England in 1860. He was educated at Repton School and Clare College, Cambridge – where he gained a first class degree in the Classical Tripos – before returning to London to study at the Slade School of Fine Art. Starting in 1889, Ford began to produce the drawings for which he is now best-remembered, as part of Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books.

      In 1892, Ford began exhibiting paintings of historical and natural subjects at the Royal Academy of Art. Over the next two decades, while continuing to work on Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books, he also illustrated The Arabian Nights Entertainments (1898) and A School History of England by Charles Fletcher and Rudyard Kipling (1911). Hailing from a family of enthusiastic cricketers, Ford also played a lot of high-level cricket, including with J.M. Barrie. He was also an acquaintance of P. G. Wodehouse and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Ford died in 1941, aged 81.