When taken away from their published contexts and put in an album without text, illustrations gain new meanings. This is a decorative initial letter, but the fairy who carries the letter ‘F’ could also be read as a portrait of the compositor carrying type at a printer’s.
Dalziel after Charles Altamont Doyle, pictorial initial, apparently for the 1866 Christmas Number of the magazine London Society. Dalziel Archive Vol. XX (1865), British Museum reg. no. 1913,0415.181, print no. 103.
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