Angela Barrett on her Fairy Tale Illustrations

"I was most inspired by pity for the beast’s awful loneliness and self-disgust. His tragedy is to know all about beauty and how to create it in everything around him, but to miss it in himself." — Angela Barrett, on illustrating Max Eilenberg’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’

Quote found on Meagan Kearney's Beauty and the Beast site. Angela Barrett's illustrations have long been some of my absolute favorite for BATB, inlcuding the Tales of Faerie header image

Retold by Max Eilenberg, it is set, at Barrett's request, in the 1860s - "the period when there was the greatest difference between the male and the female silhouette - men were tall and thin while women's skirts were wider than ever".

Barrett on Snow White:

"I always feel that my happy endings are somehow inadequate. I'm wary of perfect conclusions. I'm always disappointed by the way Jane Austen ties things up so easily at the end ... The truth is, I'm more easily moved by distress. I'm no good at jolly scenes of dancing and merriment - laughter can be so sinister."

"Naomi Lewis's retelling of The Emperor's New Clothes (Walker Books, 2000) gave Barrett a longed-for opportunity to show some very different talents. It's set in 1913, at the end of the belle epoque, in an imaginary kingdom. The drawing is glorious and only an artist with Barrett's knowledge of fashion, and her hands-on experience of dress-making, could give this story such elegant, wickedly funny authenticity. And because "it's such a one-joke story", she has introduced a host of royal dogs, including a pompadoured poodle (himself half-naked) who blushes with embarrassment at the sight of the emperor's pink bottom."

-All other quotes from This Interview on the Guardian