Diefenbach's Carnival

These fabulous illustrations appear in the 1873 children's poetry book Prinz Carneval der Jüngere ('Prince Carneval the Younger') which is online at the Braunschweig University Digital Library - it's only about 23 pages long. Braunschweig U. Library really have a fine digital book set, particularly for children and I shall be fossicking there again in the future for sure.

The verses which appear below the Leonard Diefenbach ?lithographs were composed by Carl von Prenzlau. I saw Diefenbach's name associated with a couple of other children's book while searching around but I couldn't find anything in the way of background material. The strips of characters above remind me a little of Joseph Strutt whose work predates Prinz Carneval by some 80 or so years. But Diefenbach's illustrations are just excellent by my thinking and are best seen full size on the Library's website - translation page.