{ feuilleton }

Albert Robida (1848–1926), a French illustrator and writer, might be less well-known today had he not authored several books which attempt to predict what life might be like in the 20th century. He was sufficiently well-regarded in his lifetime to be given the task of imagining “Old Paris” for one of the attractions at that [...]

In which the great German theatre director goes to Hollywood to show America how to stage Shakespeare. Nearly everyone who was anyone in pre-war German cinema passed through Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater in Berlin so it seemed natural that he’d gravitate eventually to film himself. The 1935 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was directed [...]

The Conqueror Worm (c. 1900) by František Kupka. Poe’s illustrators are legion, you could easily devote an entire blog to nothing but depictions of his stories and poems. By way of rounding off this week of posts I thought I’d point to some of the works which have caught my attention over the years, several [...]

Here it is, the book that began my fascination with the collage art of Wilfried Sätty (1939–1982), a German artist and psychedelic poster designer resident in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. Warner Books published his Poe collection in 1976 and for some reason omit the umlaut from his name even though it’s present [...]

And so to the master. Harry Clarke’s illustrated edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination was published by Harrap in 1919, with a new edition following in 1923 that featured an additional series of colour plates. I can’t imagine anyone ever producing a better illustrated version of Poe than Clarke managed, the morbid quality which [...]

The Raven. Some of these drawings have been featured here before but they’re always worth seeing again. One of the problems for the early illustrators of Poe was a lack of sympathy among many of them for the author’s doom-laden Romanticism. It’s a shame that Aubrey Beardsley didn’t try illustrating some of the poems, as [...]

The Midsummer Chronophage. John C Taylor’s Corpus Chronophage—the extraordinary mechanical clock surmounted by a time-devouring monster—was featured here following news of its installation at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 2008. Two years later its creator is ready to unveil a new clock which he calls The Midsummer Chronophage. The Midsummer Chronophage pays homage to the [...]

British artist and designer Robert Anning Bell (1863–1933) illustrates Shakespeare in this 1901 edition at the Internet Archive and the work seemed to give him an excuse to embellish many of the pages with writhing mer-folk. His adaptation isn’t as striking as William Heath Robinson’s Midsummer Night’s Dream from 1914 but then few books are. [...]

As you might expect, the Internet Archive has a lot of Alice in Wonderland adaptations, including a silent film version whose poor picture quality makes any attempt to watch it a chore. Among the many books in their collection one of the best is this illustrated edition from 1907 by Charles Robinson, brother of the [...]

Another illustrated Shakespeare and another Internet Archive scan. Lucy Fitch Perkins’ adaptation dates from 1907 and while her colour work in this volume is distinctly bland, her ink drawings are styled with some tasty Art Nouveau flourishes. Puck with bat wings is an unusual touch. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The illustrators archive Previously [...]

Something for the Summer Solstice, the whole of Arthur Rackham’s Shakespeare at the Internet Archive. Rackham’s paintings are classics of the period but for me William Heath Robinson’s black and white drawings are the superior renderings of this story. Happily you can see that book as well. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The illustrators [...]

Poe by Harry Clarke. Happy birthday Edgar Allan Poe, born two hundred years ago today. I nearly missed this anniversary after a busy weekend. Rather than add to the mountain of praise for the writer, I thought I’d list some favourites among the numerous Poe-derived works in different media. Illustrated books For me the Harry [...]

Among the legions of Poe adaptations for film and television, IMDB lists 21 versions of The Tell-Tale Heart. The UPA version from 1953 is a rare moment of seriousness from a company more well-known for its Mr Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing cartoons. This has long been one of my favourite Poe adaptations, not least for [...]

I was rather aggrieved a few weeks ago when I found a copy of James Whitcomb Riley’s The Flying Islands of the Night (1913) at the Internet Archive. Nice to find a free copy of a rare book but the grievance came as a result of an intention to write something about its illustrator, Franklin [...]

I wasn’t planning on featuring W Heath Robinson again so soon but I couldn’t resist posting some extracts from his 1914 edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, another great download from the scanned books at the Internet Archive. I have a few of these illustrations in a WHR monograph but I didn’t realise the book [...]

Another gem from the Internet Archive collection of scans from North American libraries. This edition of the poems of Edgar Allan Poe from 1900 was illustrated by William Heath Robinson (1872–1944), an artist whose later cartoons of quirky inventions have completely overshadowed his earlier books and the work of his equally talented older brother, Charles. [...]

Previous posts about illustrators. • The art of Ted Coconis • Dream Boats and Other Stories by Dugald Stewart Walker • Joseph Southall’s Bluebeard • Ezio Anichini postcards • Julius Klinger’s Sodom • René Bull’s Rubáiyát • Rackham silhouettes • Pamela Colman Smith’s Annancy Stories • The art of Henri Caruchet • George Barbier’s Falbalas [...]

Fantastic Art (1973). Cover: Earth by Arcimboldo. I’d thought of writing something about this book series even before I started this weblog since there’s very little information to be found about it online. I can’t compete with the serious Penguin-heads—and I’m not much of a dedicated book collector anyway—but I do have a decent collection [...]