The Great Illustrators of Edgar Allan Poe

This book examines the best of over 700 illustrators of Edgar Allan Poe's work, providing close analyses of individual visualizations and an art history context to understanding their emergence. It features unknown artists who inspired iterations of Poe's poems and stories, as well as famous artists such as Manet, Doré, Redon, Beardsley, Martini, and Blumenschein. The last chapter extends traditional visualizations to include his impact on twentieth- and twenty-first-century filmmakers and cartoonists.

Format: Hardback
Length: 212 pages
Publication date: 11 May 2021
Publisher: Anthem Press

Despite the fact that more than 700 illustrators have contributed to the portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe's work over the past two centuries, this book focuses on the finest of them. Beginning with the French in the 19th century and tracing the great illustrators of Poe to the present, this book offers not only detailed analyses of individual visualizations but also seeks to provide an art historical context for understanding their emergence. While most of the artists featured remain unknown to Poe scholars, their artwork represents iterations inspired by the most famous of Poe's poems and stories. In some cases, the illustrations helped increase the visibility of particular Poe works and to make them part of the international Poe canon. A few of the illustrators featured in this book (e.g., Manet, Doré, Redon, Beardsley) are recognized among the most famous artists in the world. Others, such as Martini and Blumenschein, while remaining minor figures in art history, nevertheless produced immortal work based on Poe's fiction and poetry. While still other visual artists represented here (Rackham, Dulac, Clarke) achieved artistic fame as book illustrators based on homages to other writers and fairy tales in combination with their Poe studies; their work on Poe, however, helped to solidify their larger reputations as professional illustrators. The last chapter extends traditional visualizations influenced by Poe to include his impact on 20th- and 21st-century filmmakers and cartoonists. They, too, found in Poe's writing either a source for direct re-creation or an inspiration for their own atmospheric excursions into the bizarre, the exotic, and the psychologically complex.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 229 x 153 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781785277832