Jack the Giant Killer in all his Gory Glory

Back in the days when the average lifespan was about 40 years, children’s books could be pretty brutal. Take the story of Jack the giant killer, which now we almost exclusively see in its vegan variant, Jack and the Beanstalk. Here is a sample of some of the violence to be found in the pages of 19th century English and American versions of the story. The illustration above, which could easily date from the 17th century, comes from Jack the giant killer: a hero celebrated by ancient historians, by John Rush Golby, John Lee, and William Marshall Craig, published in 1820 (all links are to the titles in the Internet Archive.)

This somewhat medieval illustration comes from a book with a title almost as long as its text: The history of Jack the giant killer: relating how he overcame several huge giants, particularly one with two heads: his marriage with the Duke’s daughter: and other exploits. To which is added, The noble basket maker (there being a disappointing lack of gore in “The noble basket maker”).

Here in this illustration from the History of Jack the giant killer; containing his birth and parentage, the giant appears to date from Roman times — perhaps an indication that author Joseph Crawhall determined something of the giant’s genealogy in addition to Jack’s.

We know, of course, that the giant was a bad guy, but today’s accounts shy away from the details of his crimes. In The history of Jack the giant killer, published by Walker and Sons of Otley, we learn that the giant (of Welsh origin this time) was a less than adequate host. As we see above, the giant, having invited Jack to spend the night in his castle, sneaks into the bedroom in the middle of the night to hack Jack into tiny bits. Fortunately, cunning Jack has put a log in his place and watches the attack from behind a column.

In many of the 19th century accounts, there are more than one giant. Sometimes there are several. Above, from The history of Jack the Giant-Killer by W. S. Fortey, we see Jack subduing two giants at once.

Sometimes, the giants had two and even three heads. In this version. from Percival Leigh’s Jack the giant killer, the giant hails from Scotland.

In later versions of the story, the giant grows less gruesome and more human. In the illustration above, from Jack the giant killer, published by George Routledge and Sons, Jack looks a right little prig while the giant could well take his place in a Biblical setting by Michelangelo or Rembrandt.

The taste for blood remained well into the second half of the century, though, as in this illustration of Jack with his nine-pound pickaxe from the McLoughlin Brother’s gore-packed Jack the giant killer from around 1870.

Or this illustration, from John Corner’s Favourite Fairy Tales, of Jack wailing with Stakhanovite fervor on a particularly hideous giant’s head.

Still, the overwhelming trend was towards a kinder, gentler Jack and giant — as in the above illustration from James Mason’s revisionist The Old Fairy Tales Retold, where Jack is quite Grecian in his figure while the giant seems merely a troubled, if plus-sized, pre-Raphaelite soul.

By the time Andrew Lang and Kate Wiggins got their hands on them, is it any wonder the last bits of blood lust were wrung from this tale?