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Faust’s blood, sweat and hell-fire | A lavish new stage production of Goethe.

Reineke Fuchs, Einband der Ausgabe des Versepos von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1846).
From Wikimedia Commons’ stock of images related to the medieval trickster hero, and another great cover showing the 19th century art of the blocked binding. In a similar vein, don’t miss these marvellous illustrations at BibliOdyssey.

Reineke als Sieger by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1846).
Elsewhere [...]

The Masque of the Red Death.
Halloween approaches so let’s consider the finest illustrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, Irish artist Harry Clarke. Aubrey Beardsley once declared “I am grotesque or I am nothing” yet even his grotesquery—which could be considerable—struggled to do justice to Poe. Clarke, the best of the post-Beardsley illustrators, found a perfect [...]