“Tales of Mystery & Imagination”, by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Harry Clarke

 

384 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1789509397, Arcturus Publishing

Two creative geniuses separated by several decades are brought together in this beautiful edition – and cheap, too: $5.00 marked down to $4.50! Since Edgar Allan Poe’s stories of suspense and horror were first compiled as Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 1902, many gifted artists have tried their hand at illustrating them (notably Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac). But it is perhaps Irishman Harry Clarke who has come closest to evoking the delirious claustrophobia and frightening inventiveness of Poe’s feverish stories. For the 1919 edition of Tales, Clarke created the twenty-four monochrome images whose nightmarish, hallucinatory quality makes you wonder if he was on something, until you remember the stories.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, best known to us today for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, Poe was one of the United States’ earliest practitioners of the short story; he is also considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, and his character, Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, is considered by many to be the model for other literary detectives to come after, from Sherlock Holmes to Hercule Poirot. Lastly, Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career, as any author alive today could tell you.

Henry Patrick “Harry” Clarke was a leading figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement and a stained-glass artist and book illustrator; his work was influenced by both Art Nouveau and Art Deco, while his stained glass was particularly informed by the French Symbolist movement. His work as a book illustrator began with commissions for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock; neither piece was completed and, tragically, much of his work was destroyed during the 1916 Easter Rising. These aborted projects were followed by an edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales and thence by his work on Tales of Mystery & Imagination, the work that would cement his reputation as an artist of the first order.

Interestingly, both Poe and Clarke died at the age of 40.

If you are a fan of Poe then you cannot help but admire the works of Clarke that compliment his chilling work. While separated by generations, it is obvious that Clarke could grasp the darkness and horror that Poe conjured up, his grim pictures more than just additions to the dread words, but equal compliments to the same. If one did not know that several decades separated Edgar Allan and Henry Patrick, one would be excused for thinking that the American author had commissioned the Irish artist to compliment his work, so well do they fit with the stories – then again, perhaps he did: I can imagine a tale dreamt up by Poe in which the ghost of an author whispers his directions in to the receptive ears of an artist who is thence driven to an early grave attempting to convey the darkness only he can hear…perhaps, perhaps…