THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER

One of the most popular works for children of its time, The King of the Golden River is the first literary fairy tale in English (as opposed to collected folk tales); Ruskin himself said it was ‘a fairly good imitation of Grimm and Dickens, mixed with some true Alpine feeling of my own’.

Later he spoke of the value of the traditional tales, with their power ‘to fortify children against the glacial cold of selfish science’; and indeed many have seen it as an introduction to the radical theories of economics and the passion for the environment that were Ruskin’s lasting legacy.

More than that, The King of the Golden River remains a powerful and effective fable about Man’s dual capacity for destructiveness and redeeming love, with a hero, villains and as strange a brace of fairy-tale creatures as one could hope to meet.

Written in 1841 as a lighthearted present for his young cousin, Effie (who later became his wife, with famously disastrous results) The King of the Golden River was not published until 1851. The great illustrator Richard Doyle contributed over 25 full pages and vignettes in his characteristically romantic but sharp-edged style.

A specially commissioned essay by Simon Cooke sets this fascinating work in the context of Ruskin''s writings and Doyle''s career, and discusses its importance in the history of fairy tale writing and of children''s publishing in the nineteenth century.