Laurence Housman meets Charles Ricketts at The Vale

Shortly after publishing his first self-illustrated fairy tale, "The Green Gaffer," Laurence Housman called on Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon at The Vale,  in search of a copy of the first issue of their little magazine of art and literature, The Dial. In his autobiography, Housman credits Ricketts as his inspiration for replacing his fuzzy chalk drawiing technique  with hardline pen-and-ink, emulating the wood-engraved Pre-Raphaelite illustrations of the 1860s. As part of his re-training, Housman produced facsimile  drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's illustrations for Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (1862).