Day 49. Book Scans: Rene Bull illustrations

I've been buying a lot of cheap used books from various booksellers who list at AbeBooks, and it's been a fantastic experience, acquiring mostly library discards for just $5 or maybe $10 each and giving them a new home. I also noticed an illustrated edition of Joel Chandler Harris from 1906 with an illustrator I have not found in any of the digital libraries online: Rene Bull. Since the book was just $20, and the seller said it was in excellent condition, I decided to buy it, with the intention of taking the book apart in order to scan it with my husband's ScanSnap scanner. We found a publishing shop in our little town that was able to guillotine the book really cleanly and nicely: yes, the book gave its life to be digitized; about half of the pages had illustrations.

The book also had one color plate with a Harry Rountree illustration; I cannot afford the expensive old books with all the Rountree color plates, but I'm going to spend some time online seeing what I can scrounge up at the websites dedicated to Rountree and his work; he is a much better known illustrator than Rene Bull. You can read about both of them at Wikipedia: Rene Bull and Harry Rountree.

So, I've created a Flickr album with the images: Uncle Remus - Bull/Rountree.

Now I'm going through the stories in Songs and Sayings to add these new illustrations. All of these stories already had at least one illustration, but I really like being able to yet more "visions" of the stories like this. Just as storytellers imagine a story anew in words each them they tell the tale, so too with artists who imagine the stories in their own images. This link goes to the stories where I've added the Bull illustrations. I did about half of the illustrations yesterday, and hopefully today or tomorrow I can finish the rest!

I think my favorite so far is what Bull did for the story of Brer Rabbit deciding the well would be a nice place to stay cool, only to find himself trapped down there and needing to fool Brer Fox into taking his place: Brer Rabbit Down in the Well.