Sir John Everett Millais | Ophelia, 1851-1852

The scene depicted is from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene VII, in which Ophelia, driven out of her mind when her father is murdered by her lover Hamlet, falls into a stream and drowns:

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds

Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;

Sir John Everett Millais | Ophelia, 1851-1852 | Tate Britain, London

John George Todd | Genre painter

Henry George Todd (1847-1898) was an English artist active in Suffolk.

Henry was the son of George Todd (1820-1904), a painter and decorator and grainer to whom he became apprenticed.

In 1865 he attended art school and later progressed onto the Royal College of Art.

After a period working in his father's decoration and gilding business in Bury St Edmund's when both Henry and his father George exhibited their works in the Todd's St Andrew's Street North shop.

Louis Wain | Postcard artist

Louis William Wain (1860-1939) was an English artist best known for his drawings of anthropomorphised cats and kittens.

Wain was born in Clerkenwell, London.

In 1881 he sold his first drawing and the following year gave up his teaching position at the West London School of Art to become a full-time illustrator.

He married in 1884 but was widowed three years later.

In 1890 he moved to the Kent coast with his mother and five sisters, and, except for three years spent in New York, remained there until the family returned to London in 1917.

Charles Dickens | Mr. Pickwick's Christmas

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The Pickwick Papers, 1836) is the first novel by English author Charles Dickens.

The book became a publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise.

The Pickwick Papers was published in 19 issues over 20 months, and it popularised serialised fiction and cliffhanger endings.

Charles Dickens | The Pickwick Papers, 1836

Chapter 28

And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment.

How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy!

How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!

Charles Dickens illustrated by Roberto Innocenti (Italian, 1940)

Sarah Jarrett | Pop Surrealism painter

Sarah Jarrett is a collage artist and illustrator based in Norfolk, UK.

She is fascinated and inspired by the human relationship with nature and the natural world.

She loves plants, flowers, and color.

Jarrett's ladies are frequently surrounded by flowers, birds and branches, which gives them a lovely surrealistic impression.

William Shakespeare | All the world's a stage / Tutto il mondo è un palcoscenico

"All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It (believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623), spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII Line 139.

The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the Seven Ages of Man.

Nicola d'Ascenzo (1871-1954) | Seven Ages of Man, stained glass

Located at the west end of the Old Reading Room, the "Seven Ages of Man" window is by the Philadelphia stained-glass studio of Nicola d'Ascenzo.

Modeled after the stone tracery of the apse window of Stratford's Holy Trinity Church, he stained glass within the stonework depicts the "Seven Ages of Man" that Jaques describes in "As You Like It".

Ethel Léontine Gabain (1883-1950)

Ethel Léontine Gabain, later Ethel Copley, was a French-Scottish artist.

Gabain was a renowned painter and lithographer and among the founding members of the Senefelder Club.

While she was known for her oil portraits of actresses, Gabain was one of the few artists of her time able to live on the sale of her lithographs.

She also did etchings, dry-points, as well as some posters.

Fred Appleyard (1874-1963)

Fred Appleyard was a British artist known for his landscape paintings, portraits, classical subjects and allegorical compositions.

He had 41 works exhibited during his lifetime by the Royal Academy and painted the mural Spring Driving Out Winter in the Academy Restaurant.

Appleyard was born in Middlesbrough, England on 9 September 1874, the son of Isaac Appleyard, an iron merchant. His uncle was the sculptor John Wormald Appleyard.