The House of Joy was written and illustrated by Laurence Housman in 1895 and published by Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner & Co. The House of Joy is a collection of adult fairy tales and were often given as Christmas gifts. Housman's original method of illustration was pen and ink and was later reproduced for the public masses through line-blocking, which was a type of photo processing technology that was popularized in the 1890s. The book consists of 10 illustrations at the beginning of each tale and each story is dedicated to a woman or girl. The illustrations in the House of Joy are proleptic in nature, meaning they anticipate events. For example, the tale, The Prince With the Nine Sorrows, on page 16, illustrates a boy lying on the grass looking up in distress at 9 beautiful maidens. Right away the reader can make the connection between the title and anticipate that the image is showing what is to happen later in the story with this prince. Housman cleverly uses both images and text to engage and deepen the readers understanding of his work.

Information gathered came from the primary source, House of Joy, 1895.

By Alessia Dickson, Alicia and Melissa.