MARRIAGE AND SUCCESS
he was an admirer of the work of Edmund J. Sullivan and helped him from his earnings as early as 1900 (‘My dear Rackham, you’re a brick,’ reads one of Sullivan’s letters to him in that year). When it was suggested that he might have been influenced by Indian miniatures, Rackham wrote to his brother Bernard (22nd September 1936):
‘I was amazed at the comparison of my work with the Indian. Except in one or two later drawings there has been no direct or even suspected influence. Actually, but remotely, more from the Japanese. But of course my very general use of the bounding line is a usual oriental style. I think I myself am more conscious of Teutonic influence. … Thinking it over, I fancy the only drawings I have done consciously influenced by the Indian are one (only one I think) in The Tempest, and two (especially The Old Man of the Sea) in The Rackham Fairy Book. P.S. And, when consciously, it has been Persian rather than Indian.’
The first year of the new century marked a turning point in Rackham’s career, for in it were published his original illustrations for Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (see pages 31 and 33) – ninety-nine drawings in black and white with a coloured frontispiece. The book was immediately successful, and its publication marked the beginning of Rackham’s lasting fame. Two new editions were called for within ten years. At intervals from 1900 onwards Rackham worked on the original drawings, partially or entirely redrawing some of them in colour, adding new ones in colour and in black-and-white, and generally overhauling them as a set, the final and best-known edition, of 1909, contained forty coloured illustrations and fifty-five line drawings. Rackham wrote to Frank Redway on 28th May 1914: ‘In many ways I have more affection for the Grimm drawings than for other sets. (I think it is partly one’s childhood affection for the46
