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Monday, June 27, 2011

A Few Mermaid Recommendations from Mnemosynehime

Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World

SurLaLuner Mnemosynehime shared this on the SurLaLune Discussion Board which receives much less traffic than the blog these days. So I wanted to share it here, too, with thanks to Mnemosynehime for posting it. My mermaid knowledge has been limited until recently, but I have become more and more fascinated as I worked on Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World. I've not read the books here, but they go onto the list...

The White Queen: A Novel (The Cousins' War)

The Lady of the Rivers: A Novel (The Cousins' War)

I was thinking of favorite mermaid tales now that your new book is coming out. An absolute must add for mermaids in literature is the novel by Vonda McIntyre The Moon and the Sun. A brother and sister from Louis IV's court return to France after the brother has captured a "sea monster." The sea monster of course is a mermaid creature, not the lovely maiden's of Anderson's tale but intelligent none the same. It's a really wonderful blend of history and fantasy, and the mermaid is as much a center of the story as the human heroine Marie-Josephe.

Another literary appearance of Melusine is The White Queen by Philippa Gregory. She should be in the upcoming Lady of the Rivers as well. Elizabeth Woodville and her mother trace their line back to Melusine herself and so the magic and lineage play a role in the women's personal lives and perceptions. More good reading for the history lover.

New Book: An Edmund Dulac Treasury: 116 Color Illustrations

An Edmund Dulac Treasury: 116 Color Illustrations was released earlier this month and I failed to write about it here. This one offers the broadest range of illustrations by Dulac, many of them not fairy tales, but wonderful all the same. Dulac is one of my favorite illustrators and I was happy to finally use one of his illustrations for the cover of one of my SurLaLune collections. That is his Little Mermaid on the cover of my Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World.

Jeff A. Menges edited this collection and it is a great slice of Dulac's work. Here's the product description:

Rooted in tales both ancient and modern, these vibrant images date from the early twentieth century's Golden Age of Illustration. Edmund Dulac, a prominent artist of the period, created them for books published between 1905 and 1928. Their moods range from the shadowy foreboding of Jane Eyre to the venturesome spirits of Treasure Island and the lighthearted fantasies of A Fairy Garland. Other featured titles include Shakespeare's The Tempest, The Arabian Nights, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen.

French-born Edmund Dulac arrived in London in 1904, when new advances in the printing process kindled a rage for picture books. Dulac's imaginative powers and technical skills assured the popularity of his book illustrations, many of which were sold separately as fine art paintings. After World War I, when the appetite for deluxe volumes waned, the artist turned his talents in many new directions, including portraiture, theatrical costume and set design, newspaper caricature, and stamp design. This retrospective of his early works is the only such anthology available, offering a singular tribute to an artist from a halcyon era of art inspired by literature.

Of course, if you are only interested in his fairy tale work, there are also these releases:

Dulac's Fairy Tale Illustrations in Full Color

Stories from Hans Christian Andersen (Calla Editions)

Dulac's Illustrations for Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales: 24 Cards

More about The Folkestone Mermaid

I shared an article about The Folkestone Mermaid back in January, so I thought you would be interested in the final result. It is rather fitting since so many of my posts are mermaid related right now with Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World just released.

From The Little Mermaid... of Folkestone: Mother-of-two chosen as nude model for copy of Copenhagen landmark:

A bronze statue of a mother striking the same pose as Copenhagen's landmark Little Mermaid model has been unveiled at the start of a seaside town's arts festival.

Georgina Baker, 38, was chosen from a shortlist of 50 people to model for the £25,000 nude statue which has been installed at Folkestone harbour in Kent.

The statue, by Turner Prize-nominee Cornelia Parker, was created after Mrs Baker responded to an advert dropped through 20,000 letterboxes in the resort requesting a model.

Here's a video, too:

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Mermaids and Mirrors

There are many mermaids with mirrors in Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the Worldsince the image is a standard one, especially in Celtic mermaid mythology.

From Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art by John Vinycomb:

The mermaid is represented as the upper half of a beautiful maiden joined to the lower half of a fish, and usually holding a comb in the right hand and a mirror in the left; these articles of the toilet have reference to the old fable that always when observed by man mermaids are found to be resting upon the waves, combing out their long yellow hair, while admiring themselves in the glass.

The mirror is a fascinating object, some scholars considered it the descendent of a moon image from ancient deity worship. These days the mirror makes us think of vain, heartless creatures. I'm not sure where the imagery came from, but it rather fictionalizes the mermaid imagery because it's hard to imagine a mermaid carrying a comb and mirror around as she travels the waters deep.

As I used Amazon to research some mermaid books, I was impressed with just how many mirrors have been manufactured with mermaid themes. Some are quite pretty, so I thought I would share here. All of these are available through Amazon in some way since it is easiest to use their images in the blog. I'm sure you can find many more on the web. I threw in a lithopane, too, since I adore lithopanes.