This was a great year for Gustave Doré. So many English editions of his books were issued that a summary of the year's art begins with an apology for calling it 'l'année dorée.' Among these _Don Quixote_ gained rapid and firm hold of popular fancy. Many people who have risen superior to Doré to-day, and speak of him with contempt now, at that time grovelled before the French artist's work. A contemporary critic writes of him as one who, 'by common consent occupies the first place of all book-illustrators of all time.' As he is not in any sense an English illustrator we need not attempt to appraise his work here, but it influenced public taste far more than it influenced draughtsmen; yet the fact that _Don Quixote_, as Houghton depicted him, even now fails to oust the lean-armoured, grotesque hero (one of Doré's few powerful creations), may be the reason for Houghton's version failing to impress us beyond a certain point. A book of the year, _Ballads and Songs of Brittany_, from the French of Hersart de la Villemarqué, by Tom Taylor (Macmillan), should be interesting to-day, if only for the two steel plates after Tissot, which show that, in his great Eastern cycle of Biblical drawings, he reverts to an earlier manner, which he had employed before the _mondaine_ and the _demi-monde_ attracted him. The book contains also four Millais', and a fine Keene, which, with most of the other subjects, had already appeared with the poems in _Once a Week_. _Enoch Arden_ (E. Moxon & Co., 1866), with twenty-five most dainty drawings by Arthur Hughes, is said, in some contemporaneous announcements of the season, to be the first successful attempts at photographing the designs on wood; but we have already noticed the fine example of Mr. Bolton's new process for photographing on wood, a bas-relief after Flaxman, in the _Lyra Germanica_ (1861). Another table-book, important so far as price is concerned, is _The Life of Man Symbolised_ (Longmans, 1866), with many illustrations by John Leighton, F.S.A. _Gems of Literature_, illustrated by Noel Paton (Nimmo); _Pen and Pencil Pictures from the Poets_ (Nimmo), with forty illustrations by Keeley Halswelle, Pettie, M'Whirter, W. Small, J. Lawson, and others; and _Scott's Poems_, illustrated by Keeley Halswelle, were also issued at this time. An epoch-making book of this season, _Alice in Wonderland_ (Macmillan), with Tenniel's forty-two immortal designs, needs only bare mention, for who does not know it intimately?