Edmund Dulac's Picture-Book for the French Red Cross — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Charity Book with a Cosmopolitan Range

The table of contents spans from China (‘The Story of the Bird Feng’) to Persia (‘Laylá and Majnún’), from Hans Andersen’s Denmark to the Thousand and One Nights. The book’s subtitle—‘For the French Red Cross’—gives it a specific historical purpose: it was sold to raise funds for war relief. Yet the stories themselves are deliberately escapist, offering a world of sultans, princesses, and magical birds. The juxtaposition is striking: a wartime charity volume that dwells on love, beauty, and transformation.

Dulac’s illustrations, listed in detail, are not mere decorations but integral to the book’s identity. Each picture is described with a caption that often quotes or paraphrases a key moment—‘The wonderful bird, like a fire of many colours come down from heaven’—suggesting that the images and text were designed to complement each other. The frontispiece, ‘Jusef and Asenath,’ hints at an Egyptian love story that closes the collection, giving the book a symmetrical arc from East to West.

The Cinderella Variant: Magic with Limits

The Cinderella excerpt reveals a version that plays with the rules of enchantment. When the clock strikes twelve, the coach vanishes, but the godmother later explains that the slippers ‘were real’ and could not disappear. This detail creates a tension between the temporary and the permanent: the pumpkin and mice revert, but the glass slipper endures. The godmother’s parting line—‘Perhaps somebody with a capital S has picked it up’—is a sly joke that acknowledges the story’s own conventions while winking at the reader.

The excerpt also emphasises Cinderella’s agency. She hides the other slipper ‘in her bosom along with other state secrets,’ a phrase that treats her as a keeper of knowledge rather than a passive victim. The prime minister’s search is described with comic exasperation—‘the Prince was leading him a dog’s life’—and the sisters’ attempts to squeeze into the slipper are met with Cinderella’s silent laughter. The tone is wry and knowing, balancing the fairy-tale structure with a modern, almost ironic voice.

Songs, Carols, and the Voice of the People

Interspersed among the longer tales are several songs: ‘Young Rousselle,’ ‘The Little Seamstress,’ ‘My Lisette,’ and ‘The Chilly Lover.’ These are short, often comic pieces that contrast with the elaborate love stories. ‘The Chilly Lover,’ for example, opens with the line ‘O Ursula, for thee / My heart is burning,— / But I’m so cold!’—a paradox that undercuts the romantic intensity of ‘Laylá and Majnún’ or ‘Aucassin and Nicolette.’

The inclusion of a carol, ‘Three Kings of Orient,’ adds a religious note, while ‘Cerberus, the Black Dog of Hades’ introduces classical mythology. This mix of genres—fairy tale, song, carol, myth—gives the book a varied texture. The songs are printed with their original French titles, suggesting a nod to the volume’s Franco-British context. The reader moves from the pathos of ‘The Nightingale’ to the bawdy humour of ‘Young Rousselle,’ a shift that keeps the collection unpredictable.

Because the excerpts cover only a fraction of the book, readers should expect a wide tonal range: the comic Cinderella variant sits alongside the tragic Persian romance of Laylá and Majnún, and the songs offer quick, often sardonic interludes. Pay attention to how Dulac’s illustrations frame each story—the captions hint at the visual emphasis. The book rewards those who read across its sections, noticing how the same motifs (magic objects, love-sick princes, clever heroines) recur in different cultural guises.

Reading about the glass slipper that stays real after the magic fades, I remembered finding my grandmother’s old copy of The Fairy Ring one rainy afternoon. Her marginal notes, pencil-thin, pointed to tales where kindness outlasts enchantment. The Fairy Ring — A Reader’s Guide felt like sitting beside her, gently turning pages together, knowing some truths need no spell to remain.