Balbus was assisting his mother-in-law to convince the dragon

“Balbus was assisting his mother-in-law to convince the dragon” by A. B. Frost.

This illustration comes from Eligible Apartments, the second of Lewis Carroll’s ‘knots’ (mathematical problems which apparently much keener brains than mine consider fun to unravel). These knots (or short stories) form a larger piece entitled A Tangled Tale  which was published serially between April 1880 and March 1885.  Readers would write in with their suggested answers and in later issues Carroll gave the solution to each knot and discussed readers’ answers. Carroll described these works thus:

The writer’s intention was to embody in each Knot (like medicine so dexterously, but ineffectually, concealed in the jam of our early childhood) one or more mathematical questions — in Arithmetic, Algebra, or Geometry, as the case might be — for the amusement, and possible edification, of the fair readers of that magazine.

The artist: Arthur Burdett Frost (January 17, 1851 – June 22, 1928), was an early American illustrator, graphic artist, comics writer and well known painter. Frost is considered one of the great illustrators in the “Golden Age of American Illustration”, illustrating over 90 books and producing hundreds of paintings. Frost married another artist, illustrator Emily Louise Phillips, in 1883 and from 1906 until May 1914, Frost and his family lived in France, attracted by the Impressionist movement. Source: Wikipedia.

If you want to read knot II, from which this illustration comes, you can do so here:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/tangled/knot2.html