{"id":28079,"date":"2025-05-12T16:30:16","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=28079"},"modified":"2025-05-12T16:36:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:36:25","slug":"harry-clarkes-illustrated-swinburne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2025\/05\/12\/harry-clarkes-illustrated-swinburne\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Clarke’s illustrated Swinburne"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"clarke30.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Aholibah (1928).<\/em><\/p>\n

You won’t find Harry Clarke’s illustration for Swinburne’s Aholibah<\/em> in Selected Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne<\/em><\/a> even though it was intended for the book, and was the illustration that Clarke deemed his favourite of the series. The erotic nature of the drawing was too much for the publisher so Clarke had to content himself by pasting a reproduction in his own copy. The copy above has been scanned from Nicola Gordon Bowe’s Harry Clarke: His Graphic Art<\/em>; everything below is from the published Swinburne collection which turned up recently at the Internet Archive.<\/p>\n

\"clarke01.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Selected Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne<\/em> was Clarke’s last illustrated book, published in 1928, three years before his untimely death. Of all the major Clarke books that appeared during the artist’s lifetime it’s always been the most difficult to find. Some of the drawings have been reprinted in recent collections but never the book itself. As with Clarke’s Faust<\/em>, the erotic and morbid qualities of the illustrations generated disquiet outside the publisher’s office, with Humbert Wolfe in the book’s introduction stating that Clarke’s interpretations were completely opposed to his own. Given the erotic and morbid preoccupations of the poet and his work this surprises me; Swinburne’s poetry was admired by Aleister Crowley and HP Lovecraft, among others. They weren’t reading him because he was writing paeans to daffodills.<\/p>\n

\"clarke02.jpg\"<\/p>\n

My earlier mention of this volume<\/a> included a link to a defunct blog with a collection of the illustrations separated from the text. This was unavoidable at the time, there wasn’t anywhere else that you could see all of them in one place. But seeing the illustrations with the poems benefits the drawings as well as the verse, especially when the poems themselves aren’t so familiar. For my part it’s also good to see all<\/em> of the illustrations, being the owner of a first edition which I bought many years ago only to discover that a couple of the best pictures had been carefully removed with a razor. This is a common problem with old illustrated books. Caveat emptor as always.<\/p>\n

\"clarke29.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Clarke didn’t do many double-page illustrations. This is one of his best.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"clarke05.jpg\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"clarke03.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke04.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke06.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke07.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke08.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke09.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke10.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke11.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke12.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke13.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke14.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke15.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke16.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke17.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke18.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke19.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke20.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke21.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke22.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke23.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke24.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke25.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke26.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke27.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"clarke28.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 More Harry Clarke online<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke online<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke record covers<\/a>
\n\u2022 Thomas Bodkin on Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke: His Graphic Art<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke and others in The Studio<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke\u2019s Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke in colour<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Tinderbox<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke and the Elixir of Life<\/a>
\n\u2022 Cardwell Higgins versus Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Modern book illustrators, 1914<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #3: Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke\u2019s stained glass<\/a>
\n\u2022 Harry Clarke\u2019s The Year\u2019s at the Spring<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Harry Clarke, 1889\u20131931<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aholibah (1928). You won’t find Harry Clarke’s illustration for Swinburne’s Aholibah in Selected Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne even though it was intended for the book, and was the illustration that Clarke deemed his favourite of the series. The erotic nature of the drawing was too much for the publisher so Clarke had to content … Continue reading “Harry Clarke’s illustrated Swinburne”<\/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":"New blog post: Harry Clarke's illustrated Swinburne","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],"tags":[391,11083,99,1687,13986,568],"class_list":["post-28079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-black-white","category-books","category-illustrators","tag-aleister-crowley","tag-algernon-charles-swinburne","tag-harry-clarke","tag-hp-lovecraft","tag-humbert-wolfe","tag-nicola-gordon-bowe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-7iT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28079","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=28079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}