In a rose garden before a turreted château and a fountain, the Beast, with a boar's head, tusks and long pointed ears, raises one hand in anger. He wears a red doublet with a pleated skirt, a sash and a sword. Beside him an old man in a long pink coat, a red hat and a curled gray wig shrinks back by the rose bushes.

The artist's monogram is at lower left. Walter Crane designed it for his toy book Beauty and the Beast, one of Walter Crane's Toy Books published by George Routledge and Sons in London; library catalogs date it 1874 or 1875. It shows the opening of the tale: on his way home the Merchant picks a rose for his youngest daughter, Beauty, and a hideous Beast appears and asks how he dared to touch his flowers. The pictures are color wood engravings, engraved and printed by Edmund Evans. Each toy book was slim: the Smithsonian's copy has three leaves of text and three of color plates, stitched into a printed cover that Crane designed.

John Lane reissued it around 1901, still printed by Evans, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a copy of that edition. The toy book was first published by George Routledge and Sons in London around 1874.