{"id":3059,"date":"2008-04-25T01:09:48","date_gmt":"2008-04-25T00:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/04\/24\/franklin-booths-flying-islands\/"},"modified":"2011-05-19T19:33:06","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T18:33:06","slug":"franklin-booths-flying-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/04\/25\/franklin-booths-flying-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"Franklin Booth’s Flying Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I was rather aggrieved a few weeks ago when I found a copy of James Whitcomb Riley’s The Flying Islands of the Night<\/em><\/a> (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 Booth (1874\u20131948), and post a picture or two. It turns out that the scanned copy available is complete but all the colour plates have been removed, probably stolen during its career as a library volume. Riley’s story is a piece of light fantasy which might well have been forgotten by now if it wasn’t for Booth’s incredible illustrations; as a result it’s the illustrations that make the book worth seeking out.<\/p>\n

\"booth2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Booth’s penmanship from Franklin Booth: American Illustrator. <\/em><\/p>\n

Happily, and by coincidence, Mr Door Tree at the essential Golden Age Comic Book Stories<\/a> has uploaded<\/a> scans<\/a> of<\/a> his<\/a> own<\/a> in the past few days. Beautiful stuff and easily the equal of Booth’s contemporaries in Britain such as Charles<\/a> and William Heath Robinson<\/a>, Edmund Dulac<\/a> et al. Booth’s colour work resembles similar watercolour book illustration of the period but his black & white work was quite unique, being done in a pen style derived from his boyhood interest in engraved magazine illustrations. His careful use of hatched lines went on to influence later American illustrators including Roy Krenkel<\/a>, Mike Kaluta<\/a>, Berni Wrightson<\/a> and others. Golden Age Comic Book Stories has an earlier posting featuring one of Booth’s pen drawings here<\/a> and a page of Mucha-esque women here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Bud Plant’s Franklin Booth page
\n<\/a>\u2022 Franklin Booth: American Illustrator<\/a><\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “Franklin Booth’s Flying Islands”<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,21,48],"tags":[1747,286,1237,1213,1865,1132,1280,499],"class_list":["post-3059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-fantasy","category-illustrators","tag-berni-wrightson","tag-edmund-dulac","tag-franklin-booth","tag-golden-age-comic-book-stories","tag-james-whitcomb-riley","tag-mike-kaluta","tag-roy-krenkel","tag-william-heath-robinson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-Nl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059","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=3059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}