A short while ago I purchased 18 (out of a total of 20) volumes of a 1919 series for children called The Book of Knowledge: The Children’s Encyclopædia (NY: The Grolier Society). It has lots of wonderful black and white illustrations – some are drawings, some are photographs, and some are copies of famous artworks. Not to mention the frames on some of the pages. I’m looking forward to doing a lot of scanning from these 18 books.

But today’s picture is from Vol.4, pg. 1205. It is from the section entitled “The Book of Stories” and the story is “The Bride of the Wandering Prince”. The passage relevant to the picture is this:

The princes, while wandering on, came one day to the town where Cherry and her mother lived, and as they passed along the street they saw the fair maiden standing at the window. Then each of the three fell in love with her, and began to say how much he longed to have her for his wife.

Scarely had the wish been spoken when all drew their swords, and dreadful battle began.

Here are the three princes beginning to fight, with Cherry oblivious to it at her window (click on the image to see it / download it full-sized):

"The three princes saw a fair maiden sitting at the a window", _The Book of Knowledge_, 1919. Volume 4, pg 1205. Book in author's possession, PD due to age.

I cleaned up the image a bit from the original scan, to make it more clear. More images to come soon!

Peace,

Bekka

Tags: Art Nouveau, bw, daily public domain, DPD, fair maiden, fantasy, free, graphics, illustration, image, lady, man, medieval, men, modified image, PD, png, princes, public domain, sword, swordfight