How do fairy tales, with roots reaching deep into the past, continue to cast their spell on us? This question animates The Art of Fairy Tales by Joanna Ebenstein. The book is a visual exploration of the ever-changing lives that fairy tales take on through the imagination of artists.

In the preface to her essay collection Forms of Enchantment (2018), historian, mythographer and writer Marina Warner invokes the classical idea of enargeia, or “shining vitality”, to describe the vividness through which an artwork seems almost alive. The collection of artworks that Ebenstein presents in The Art of Fairy Tales captures this shining vitality across centuries of fairy tale art.

Each thematic chapter opens with a short introduction before presenting a selection of artworks accompanied by concise but detailed accounts of their artists and historical contexts. Ebenstein avoids a chronological approach, allowing representations of the same otherworldly figures from distant periods to meet on the page.

As a result, William Nicholson’s luminous 1922 illustration of a fairy stemming from a flower faces contemporary artist Mat Collishaw’s 1997 photographs of fairies amid technological debris on the opposite page. This act of unexpected juxtaposition sharpens the reader’s eye to the changing visions of the marvellous, showing how each artist has imagined anew what magic and otherworldly beings might look like.

The heart of Ebenstein’s collection lies in the Golden Age of Illustration (circa 1880 to 1930), when richly illustrated children’s books flourished. Her research brings lesser-known visual treasures........

© The Conversation