King Knox #AtoZChallenge

        Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is Relief Printed Alphabet Squared, an alphabet of alphabets illustrated with relief block prints, because alphabets and relief block prints are two great tastes that go great together.  Find the master list of participating blogs here.

        Today we begin with an alphabet of Kats.  Just kidding!  It’s Cats A-Z by Martha Knox.  The cat at K is Kirlee, the first male of the Devon Rex breed, which are the ones with curly fur and even curly whiskers.  I like that Knox 

has given this wood block print a curly background pattern, too.  But there are 

others I like more, and since K is another sparse letter, I’ve chosen two favorites to share: I for Iriomote cat, and J for Jeoffry.  Jeoffry, in case you’re not familiar with him, is the cat of eighteenth century poet Christopher Smart, who extols Jeoffry’s godliness at great length.

        While we’re exalting mere mortals (and in a cute segue from the Rex of Kirlee’s breed), how about some Kings?  Aunt Friendly’s Royal Alphabet includes lots of Kings, of course, but also some Queens and other words associated with the history of British Royalty.  K is, in fact, for King, and in this case specifically King Henry VI, who wasn’t an important enough Henry to warrant the H.  (To be fair, there was a lot of competition.  When it came to G, Aunt Friendly didn’t even bother choosing a favorite, but just let it stand for all four of the Georges who had been kings as of publication.)  I also give you P, which is for Philippa, queen of Edward III, because I always enjoy a good medieval fairy tale picture.  I’m sorry to tell you, though, that this alphabet is engraved rather than relief printed, and thus wouldn’t even be here if the world of block printed alphabets weren’t so scanty in the K department.

        Thus the moral of K is, apparently, to be willing to accept “klose enough” when things don’t go your way.

        But before it’s too late, let’s just take an extra helping of Kings to get a few more block prints into this post.  King seems to be a somewhat less popular K nowadays than it was in the nineteenth century, and I think it was less popular in American books than British, although those are just my observations, not scientifically tabulated.  So here we have three kings: one American and two British, one black-and-white and two colored.  My favorite is definitely the b&w one, which has a nice look of carving and a pleasant expression on his face.  (And another letter from his alphabet, without its picture, can be found as a letter icon.  See if you can spot it!)

        Moral II: he is indeed a king who knows how to rule himself.

        So, tell me about your pets.  Do you have a kitten?  Or perhaps a koala or a kangaroo?

[Pictures: Kirlee, Iriomote cat, Jeoffry, wood block prints by Martha Knox from Cats A-Z, 2013 (Images from Words on Woodcuts);

King Henry VI, Philippa, engravings printed in color from Aunt Friendly’s Royal Alphabet, 1867 (Images from Toronto Public Library);

King, hand-colored wood block print from Pictured Alphabet, c.1857 (Image from University of Washington);

King, wood block print from The Picture Alphabet, 1830 (Image from Toronto Public Library); 

King, hand-colored wood block print from The Ladder to the Alphabet, 1845, (Image from Toronto Public Library).]