{"id":16033,"date":"2014-11-24T02:49:39","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T01:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=16033"},"modified":"2015-05-18T03:54:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T02:54:49","slug":"john-austens-little-ape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2014\/11\/24\/john-austens-little-ape\/","title":{"rendered":"John Austen&#8217;s Little Ape"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"austen1.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/austen1.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>British illustrator John Austen (1886\u20131948) illustrated many classic works of fiction throughout the 1920s, one of which, <em>Hamlet<\/em>, was recently reprinted by Dover Publications. His other work isn&#8217;t so easy to find, however, and I&#8217;d not seen <em>Little Ape and Other Stories<\/em> (1921) until Nick H drew my attention to a copy for sale at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebay.co.uk\/usr\/silver-gryph?_trksid=p2047675.l2559\" target=\"_blank\">silver-gryph&#8217;s eBay pages<\/a>. (Thanks, Nick!)<\/p>\n<p>Ralph Holbrook Keen&#8217;s story collection was Austen&#8217;s first illustrated edition although you wouldn&#8217;t necessarily take it for a debut work. There are the familiar nods to Beardsley\u2014the black-and-yellow cover especially\u2014and possibly Harry Clarke whose influence is more evident in the <em>Hamlet<\/em> drawings. Clarke and Austen exhibited together in 1925. The skeleton with a floral crown makes me think of the rose-crowned skeleton in Edmund J. Sullivan&#8217;s <em>Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t<\/em> (1913), although this may be a result of Sullivan&#8217;s drawing having been made very familiar by its use on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darkstarpalace.com\/2010\/06\/skull-fuck-cover-art.html\" target=\"_blank\">Mouse &amp; Kelley&#8217;s posters for the Grateful Dead<\/a>. One of the many connections between the Golden Age of Illustration and the Golden Age of Psychedelia.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"austen2.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/austen2.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"austen3.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/austen3.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"austen4.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/austen4.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"austen5.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/austen5.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"austen6.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/austen6.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/the-illustrators-archive\/\">The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2013\/06\/17\/john-austens-hamlet\/\">John Austen\u2019s Hamlet<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2007\/05\/23\/the-art-of-john-austen-1886-1948\/\">The art of John Austen, 1886\u20131948<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British illustrator John Austen (1886\u20131948) illustrated many classic works of fiction throughout the 1920s, one of which, Hamlet, was recently reprinted by Dover Publications. His other work isn&#8217;t so easy to find, however, and I&#8217;d not seen Little Ape and Other Stories (1921) until Nick H drew my attention to a copy for sale at &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2014\/11\/24\/john-austens-little-ape\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;John Austen&#8217;s Little Ape&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,30,42,48,17],"tags":[4537,94,6715,99,2140,6713,442,5148,4151],"class_list":["post-16033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-black-white","category-books","category-illustrators","category-psychedelia","tag-alton-kelley","tag-aubrey-beardsley","tag-edmund-j-sullivan","tag-harry-clarke","tag-john-austen","tag-ralph-holbrook-keen","tag-stanley-mouse","tag-the-golden-age","tag-the-grateful-dead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4aB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}