Anthony R. Montalba


Anthony Rubens Montalba was a Swedish-born, naturalised British painter and the head of a family of renowned artists that based itself in Venice in the later part of the nineteenth-century. He may be known best as the editor of an 1849 story collection illustrated by Richard Doyle, Fairy Tales from All Nations.

Fairy Tales from All Nations

Montalba edited Fairy Tales from All Nations, illustrated by Richard Doyle and published by Chapman & Hall in 1849.
In the introduction to his book, Montalba declared that the folly of declaring fairy tales to be immoral had now been "cast off". Jack Zipes explains the Puritanical background and the flowering after 1840 in the introduction to his Victorian Fairy Tales anthology.
The US publisher quoted a review in the British literary magazine The Athenaeum:
A new edition of collection was published in 1872 under the title Famous Fairy Tales, or perhaps Famous Fairy Tales of All Nations, probably in four volumes.

Life

Montalba was the son of Aron Abrahamson and Frederika Schlesinger. He was born in 1812 in Karlskrona, Blekinge Iän, Sweden and named Salomon.
Montalba married an English woman, Emeline Davies, in 1839. The couple had five children, four daughters and a son:
The 1871 British census shows Montalba living at 19 Arundel Gardens, Notting Hill, London, with four daughters, all artists.
Montalba died in Venice on 24 July 1884