3-052-328 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Wolves on the Battle-Field, from Mrs. Howitt's "Songs of Animal Life", 1872. Illustration from a Christmas book. 'The deserved popularity of Mrs. Howitt as a writer, both in prose and verse, of some of the pleasantest and wholesomest literature, addressed to simple minds, requires no fresh testimonial at this day. In republishing a collection of her little poems, "Sketches of Natural History, and Songs of Animal Life," with more than one hundred finely-engraved drawings by H. Giacomelli,...Messrs. T. Nelson and Sons have provided an agreeable Christmas gift. It is right that the children of each successive generation should learn Mrs. Howitt's tale of "The Spider and the Fly" and "The True Story of Webspinner," besides those which were published last year, in a not less attractive form, with the same artist's designs, under the title "Birds and Flowers." The Engraving selected is that which represents the wolves coming at night upon a battle-field to devour the bodies of the slain - a horrible picture, but not worse than the truth, and used by Mrs. Howitt, as it ought to be, for the purpose of exciting a just detestation of war'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.