Illustration Friday: 3 Public Domain Images from Children’s Books

Finding a vintage children’s books is a real treat. The books are often abundantly illustration. Since today is Friday, I thought I would do a post with some copyright free images from books in my collection. The books are pre-1923 and should be in the public domain.

The black and white illustration above should be in the public domain. The image is from the book, Dramatic Reader For Lower Grades, by Florence Holbrook, Copyright 1911, page 118.

This is Hansel and Gretel meeting the witch at the gingerbread house.

Above is a public domain image from the book, Old Fashioned Stories & Poems, Selected & Arranged by Eva March Tappan, Copyright 1907 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

This image illustrates the poem “An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog” By Oliver Goldsmith. The illustrations is between the pages 394 and 395. I really like the very simple lines in the drawing. The bald man in the tree is a real hoot.  If you’d like to read the poem, I did type it up and save it as a jpeg.  You can see it here or on the flickr page.

When I find a child’s book that has colored illustrations, I feel like I found a treasure.  Above is a  illustration in color from the book A Child’s Story of the Bible, Copyright 1899 by Henry Altemus.   

This color illustration is between pages 36 and 37. It is a image of Jezebel.

All of the copyright free images posted in the entry have been uploaded to my flickr account and given a Creative Commons attribution.  You can look at and download larger versions of the illustrations by clicking on the image above.