Edmund Dulac’s illustrated Poe

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The Haunted Palace.

There’s always more Poe. Which means, in the context of these pages, there’s always another illustrated edition to be found. It’s good to finally discover a complete edition of The Bells, and Other Poems; I’d seen a few of these paintings before—Alone was used on the cover of a biography of Poe by Wolf Mankowitz—but the collection tends to be overshadowed by Dulac’s other books. The Internet Archive has had a scan available for several years but most of the colour plates are missing, picture theft being a common hazard for library books. These copies are from a more recent addition to Project Gutenberg.

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The Bells.

The Bells was published 12 years after W. Heath Robinson had produced his own illustrated edition of Poe poems in 1900. The two books complement each other more than you might expect; all of Robinson’s illustrations are line drawings with an Art Nouveau quality that soon vanished from his work, and was long gone by the time he found a popular audience for his drawings of whimsical inventions. Dulac’s edition includes a few monochrome drawings but these are little more than spot illustrations scattered among the watercolour plates. Several of the paintings, especially the one for Israfel, are Symbolist art as much as they’re illustration. This might seem inevitable given the Symbolist tendencies of Poe’s verse but not all illustrators manage to reflect these qualities.

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The Bells.

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The Bells.

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Annabel Lee.

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Silence.

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The Raven.

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To One in Paradise.

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Lenore.

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To Helen.

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The City in the Sea.

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The Sleeper.

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Ulalume.

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Eldorado.

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The Conqueror Worm.

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To the River.

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Al Aaraaf.

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Al Aaraaf.

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Bridal Ballad.

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To Helen.

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The Valley of Unrest.

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To —— —— (Mrs. Maris Louise Shew).

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Israfel.

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Fairy-land.

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Dreamland.

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Alone.

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Tamerlane.

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Tamerlane.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
The Purloined Eidolon
Martin van Maële’s illustrated Poe
Narraciones extraordinarias by Edgar Allan Poe
Fritz Eichenberg’s illustrated Poe
The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope
Hugo Steiner-Prag’s illustrated Poe
Burt Shonberg’s Poe paintings
Illustrating Poe #5: Among the others
Illustrating Poe #4: Wilfried Sätty
Illustrating Poe #3: Harry Clarke
Illustrating Poe #2: William Heath Robinson
Illustrating Poe #1: Aubrey Beardsley
Poe at 200
The Tell-Tale Heart from UPA
William Heath Robinson’s illustrated Poe

3 thoughts on “Edmund Dulac’s illustrated Poe”

  1. Kupka’s Black Idol is definitely a Poe piece as well, titled “Land of Dreams” when it was published with an extract from Dreamland in Cocorico.

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