The Little Lame Prince and His Travelling Cloak

A prince is crippled in infancy, shut in a tower by the uncle who takes his throne, and given a travelling cloak by his godmother so that he can see the kingdom he cannot rule. Dinah Craik wrote it in 1875 and it was read aloud in nurseries for eighty years. The consolation offered is entirely imaginative, and the book is honest that nothing else is available. Sixty paintings, among them Thomas Lawrence and Vilhelm Hammershøi, dwell on children, interiors and quiet northern light, matching a tale of confinement and the small consolations of looking.