The True Story of Humpty Dumpty

Three disagreeable children are sent into Make Believe Land, where they are set to rescue Humpty Dumpty from the City of the Wicked King and put right what the nursery rhyme left broken. Anna Alice Chapin wrote for the American stage and for children, and the book is built like a pantomime. The rhymes are taken apart and reassembled with real invention. Forty plates of painting from 1730 to 1900, with Cruikshank and Turner among the painters, carry the same pantomime spirit through scenes of conjurers, hobby horses, and the Erlking.