The Little Book of Dragons

Dragons have roamed human consciousness throughout time and across cultures. A dragon is the embodiment of death and destruction in the Apocalypse battles of the Christian Bible and the evil that is vanquished by chivalrous knights in Medieval sagas and Persian epic poems. But they are also benevolent and wise in Chinese mythology, and the only mythical creature of all the animals in the Chinese zodiac. The Little Book of Dragons tells the story of the dragon’s rise, from the various forms that it has taken in myths and legends across the world, to modern depictions of dragons and their place in the storytelling of today. Illustrated from across the wide-ranging collections of the British Library, the images include bas-de-page drawings, miniatures and historiated initials from Gospels and bestiaries, illuminated pages of Persian manuscripts and Chinese ephemera, as well as line illustrations from collections of fairy tales and modern imagery.

Carolyne Larrington is an emerita professor of medieval European literature at the University of Oxford and an emerita research fellow at St John’s College, Oxford.