As a Christmas present my mum bought me this lovely little folio edition – Letters from Fairyland. It’s a tiny book of only 24 pages long but is a beautiful concept. The author and artist Charles van Sandwyk has illustrated books like Alice in Wonderland for the Folio Society before and also wrote a book called “How to see Fairies”. This acts as a follow up with the premise that a child wrote to him about wanting to spot fairies in their garden and this book contains the letters and correspondence between them about Charles journey to paint the portrait of the Fairy King.
The book is simply written and aimed at children being a simple tale set out in elegant handwriting with the fairy letters being presented as little pop up or pull out pieces. There’s also a little illustrated guide to fairies as a built in pamphlet. The purpose of this book is to be something lovely that you can share and treasure with its high quality parchment, elegant layout, and well constructed little pockets of content.
I love that the Folio Society provides a way in which something this pretty can be purchased and loved without having to cater to a mass market by reducing the quality of the item. It’s not a cheap purchase but as a lovely gift for someone it’s well worth it.
