Note the bell-bottom pants and zippered windbreakers the kids are wearing. That’s Edmund front and center looking every inch the betrayer.
It’s time to look at some Dutch editions of the Chronicles.
The illustration above was painted by Jan Wesseling for a 1976 omnibus edition that combined The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Prince Caspian. The pic is mainly the latter with the kids wearing modern (mid-1970s) clothing, but the far right features Caspian in his sissy-boy hairdo and a court lady who is holding either a harp or a book in her hands. The only candidates I can think of for her are Caspian’s old nurse, Queen Prunaprismia, or Miss Prizzle, but none of them seem to fit, and none are major characters in the way Trumpkin, Glenstorm, or Trufflehunter were. Then there’s that weird little witch/chicken hybrid at the lower right, whom Peter is regarding with affection. No clue on that one either. Aslan stands in the middle between both, providing continuity.
This edition, published between 1976 and 1978, was, unusually, a four volume set.
Volume I featured De betoverde kleerkast & Prins Caspian (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe & Prince Caspian)
Volume II featured De wonderreis van het drakeschip & De zilveren stoel (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader & The Silver Chair)
Volume III featured Het Paard en de Jongen (The Horse and His Boy)
Volume IV featured Het neefje van de tovenaar & De laatste strijd (The Magician’s Nephew & The Last Battle).
Wesseling began his career as a comic book artist and later switched to children’s illustration. I think that’s evident in how the pic is composed and the loose, inked outlines with their washes of color.
These pics were for the dust covers of the hardbacks. The paperbacks that followed used them as well, but in a cropped form.
Overall, they are nice, though dated, depictions with a few oddball artistic choices that add to their interest.
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Cover of The Silver Chair from a later edition… a snake with boobies! And boy does she look pissed!
Annemarie van Haeringen is the artist, and she also did the covers for The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Battle, which were released 1989 – 1993. In one of those futz-ups so common in the world of publishing, the previous three titles appeared in 1983, but were discontinued. It does seem, though, that van Heiringen also did the earlier covers, going by the similarity of the style.
