{books} – Page 466 – { feuilleton }

Reynard the Fox

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 on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Old book covers
• Decorated Russian book covers
• The Hetzel editions of Jules Verne

The art of Virginia Frances Sterrett, 1900–1933

“Rosalie saw before her eyes a tree of marvellous beauty” from Old French Fairy Tales.

Continuing the series of occasional posts mining the scanned library books at the Internet Archive, these illustrations are from a 1920 edition of Old French Fairy Tales by Comtesse Sophie de Ségur and a 1921 volume of Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Virginia Frances Sterrett, like Beardsley and Harry Clarke, was another artist whose life was cut short by tuberculosis. She was a remarkably accomplished 19-year-old when she illustrated the Sophie de Ségur book. Her incredible illustrations for The Arabian Nights (1928) can be seen here.

“They walked side by side during the rest of the evening” from Old French Fairy Tales.

“She whipped up the snakes and ascended high over the city” from Tanglewood Tales.

“This pitiless reptile had killed his poor companions” from Tanglewood Tales.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

The New Love Poetry

Yesterday’s book purchase was a small poetry collection from the magical year of 1967, edited by Peter Roche. Despite its Beatles cash-in title, Love, Love, Love: The New Love Poetry, not everything here is lightweight fare, Adrian Mitchell’s Peace is Milk is aimed more at the war in Vietnam than some object of affection. Among the other contributors there are the poets one would expect such as Roger McGough and Michael Horovitz, also Pete Brown who wrote lyrics for Cream and later had his own band, Piblokto. And there are contributions from Libby Houston, the wife of Mal Dean, an artist notable for his illustrations for Mike Moorcock’s books of the period and (later) some album sleeves for Pete Brown and others. Some of Libby’s poems appeared in the 50th anniversary edition of New Worlds magazine, along with an illustration by yours truly.

Contents aside, I picked this up mainly for the cover which I guessed was the work of Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, aka Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, along with Martin Sharp the leading psychedelic artists in the UK during the late Sixties. This proved to be a good guess as the book can be seen on this Hapshash page and if I’d have looked closer while in the shop I’d have seen their name written in tiny letters on the purple “O”. Not a difficult guess, their swirly lettering designs are very distinctive. See the full groovy cover here.

• A Hapshash and the Coloured Coat gallery

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dutch psychedelia
• Family Dog postcards
• The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream revisited

Phallic worship

And why not, say I? Being a born-again pagan I’d much rather venerate the generative organ of the human male in all its splendour than abase myself before one of the invisible sky gods; I had my fill of that when I was an unwilling young Catholic. And besides, what gay man doesn’t worship the phallus in some form?

Most people have heard of the Japanese festival, Kanamara Matsuri, a Shinto fertility celebration. Giant ceremonial phalluses are paraded through the streets and a good time is had by all. Less well-known is a similar Dionysian festival which takes place in the small town of Tyrnavos, Greece on the first Monday of Lent.

If you want to eat phallus-shaped bread, drink through phallus-shaped straws from phallus-shaped cups, kiss ceramic phalluses, sit on a phallus-shaped throne and sing dirty Greek songs about the phallus, then you should visit the little Greek town of Tyrnavos each year on “Clean Monday.”
…
The festival is in honor of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, madness and ecstasy. While the men, women and children of Tyrnavos celebrate the penis, the rest of Greece marks the beginning of the pre-Easter fast more modestly by flying kites and eating octopus, olives and unleavened bread. More.

Bronze statuette of the Roman fertility god Priapus, made in two parts (shown here in assembled and disassembled forms).

Fitting then, now that spring is passing into summer, that Taschen are following up their Big Book of Breasts with the Big Penis Book. The splendid cover needs to be seen in action (as it were) since the underwear is printed on a clear wrapper which can be removed to expose the wonderful tumescence beneath. I like the sly humour in the design which makes the background of the breasts book blue while the penis book is pink. I’m not too sure about the quality of the contents from their previews, much of it seems to be filled out with photo shoots from gay porn of the Seventies. But I’ll suspend my judgement until I’ve given it a proper viewing. If anything was going to be the phallic worshipper’s bible, this must be it. Good to see Taschen flying the flag as always for high-quality porn/erotica.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of ejaculation

Horror comics

More horror…. It’s been a while since I posted anything work-related here, not because I haven’t been busy but because much of the work this year is still waiting to see the light of day as a result of protracted schedules.

The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics is an anthology from Running Press (US) that really is mammoth—over 540 pages—and includes a reprinting of my Dunwich Horror pages from The Haunter of the Dark. You can see the selections in the Sprout widget below. (Not any more you can’t. Sprout decided to make everyone pay for their previously free service. Bye bye, Sprout.) It feels a bit fraudulent being in there since my drawings are more illustrations than a comics adaptation but I imagine most people buying the book will be happy to see poor old Wilbur Whateley’s demise receive another airing. Many of the featured strips are in the hokey EC mould which is often more comic than horror (one reason I was never very taken with EC) but the material gets better as it goes along and it’s a pleasure to be in anything with an artist as good as Mike Kaluta.

The Dunwich Horror, title page (1988).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive