Adventures at Home and Abroad: Thomas Crane and Ellen Houghton’s Children’s Illustrations

Picturesque scenes of a family traveling across the English Channel and staying close to home are brilliantly captured in these Victorian-era novels.

British artists Thomas Crane and Ellen Houghton worked on the illustrations for the children's books "Abroad" and "London Town," contrasting visits to a foreign land and the scenes closer to home. Project Gutenberg. Public Domain

Thomas Crane and his cousin Ellen Elizabeth Houghton illustrated a collection of children’s books: “At Home” (1881) (to which fellow illustrator John George Sowerby also contributed), “Abroad” (1882), and “London Town” (1883). In this children’s series, Crane and Houghton’s illustrations demonstrate an eye for detail and an attentive awareness to those beautiful moments in the great bustle of life’s adventures.

Crane (1843–1903) was a British artist, book illustrator, and card designer, who worked as the director of design at the London office of Marcus Ward & Co. Houghton (1853–1922) was also a painter and illustrator, known depicting people in bright Victorian clothing.

Adventures Abroad

“Abroad” welcomes the children by encouraging them to use their imagination as it takes them to foreign lands. Crane and Houghton present the reader with a color lithograph of three children packing their travel trunk with their maid. Packing can be very stressful, especially with little children, but the illustration captures the sweet moment when the children offer to pack their treasures, while the maid supervises.

"Packing," frontispiece for the children's book "Abroad." Project Gutenberg. Public Domain

Crane illustrated the details, while Houghton beautifully drew the figures in the picture. Both artists emphasized the beauty of this scene by organizing details with well-defined shapes and lines. The picture’s measured quality, along with the wonderful blues, greens, and golden yellows, captures a wonderful, calm moment despite the hectic nature of travel.

Later in the book, Crane and Houghton illustrated another moment, titled “Crossing the Channel From Folkestone to France,” which shows a family on the deck of a steamboat, the captain at the hem, sailors manning the deck, and other passengers milling about. The family stands front and center, a perfect image of familial happiness. The children’s teacher, Miss Earle, holds the youngest, while the three elder children walk arm in arm, enjoying each other’s company.

"Crossing the Channel From Folkestone to France," by Thomas Crane and Ellen E. Houghton. Travel book for children in Victorian times. Project Gutenberg. Public Domain

This lithograph creates a busier picture with greater quantity and variety of people, items, and surroundings. The color scheme is less golden, with more mossy greens, grays, and browns, thus creating the sense of a foreign environment. Nevertheless, the cheerful children are placed in the foreground in contrast to the chaos around them. They are the peace and joy in the busy journey.

Adventures at Home

Both “At Home” and “London Town” contrast the foreign travels foreign travels found in “Abroad” with domestic adventures by showing British families enjoying wonders closer to home. In “London Town,” Crane and Houghton illustrated “Lowther Arcade,” which presents a market full of an assortment of curiosities and toys. Stalls and stores stretch far down the hallway of a large building, and each store has several customers peering at items.

"Lowther Arcade" from the Victorian children's book "London Town," illustrated by Thomas Crane and his cousin, Ellen Elizabeth Houghton. Project Gutenberg. Public Domain

In this lithograph, the artists used perspective and vanishing lines to convey the vast depth of the Arcade, as well as many different colors to portray the unimaginable variety of goods. Yet the repetitive nature of the arches and windows in the Arcade establishes an overarching order, and, beneath these arches, Houghton used the foreground to show families smiling as they enjoy the allure of each new shop. They illustrated the multitude of choices and simultaneously showed the wonder to be found in such a stimulating place.

Through these illustrations, Crane and Houghton, used different techniques to establish order amid chaos so that readers can notice those beautiful moments in an adventure. A.A. Milne perfectly caught this spirit in “Winnie-the-Pooh” when he wrote: “When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.” Thus, Crane and Houghton’s illustrations demonstrate that putting on one’s “Big Boots” means entering a chaotic world (at home or abroad), yet, if people look carefully, they will find that, in in that chaos, beauty, wonder, and adventure thrive. 

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