Last October, I put up a post about some beautiful color work by W. Heath Robinson (1872-1944). The imagery up at that time was from The Song of the English, a long poetic piece of writing by Rudyard Kipling. It was one of the first books I acquired while working on my next Dover outing, Golden Age Illustration of W. H. Robinson. Now I bring it around full circle, to the last book I picked up for that same project.
While lacking the amount of pieces that show up in Song of the English, this volume of Kipling Poetry— Collected Verse— has some masterful imagery as well. I almost passed up acquiring it, it has comparatively few color plates— but I stumbled upon a a 1910 Doubleday copy, with all the art, and a nearly detached cover...that I got very reasonably. So let me share a few of these with you, as a preview of the upcoming book. As for the illustrative years of W. H. Robinson's career, (who later went on to become a very successful cartoonist, leaving more traditional book illustration to others) the works he did for these two Kipling volumes in 1909 and 1910 are among his best. Other books that will be featured in the upcoming Dover work include images from The Water Babies, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and some of W. H. Robinson's own writings— Uncle Lubin and Bill the Minder.
Next month at some point, I'll bring out some of the best work from his older brother, Charles.
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Return from the Edge
I've been to the Edge—and it was terrific. If you have ANY CHANCE AT ALL to get to the show mentioned in my last post, don't let it get past you. Three big gallery rooms, packed with a wealth of the best fantastic creatives out there. Thank you, Pat and Jeannie, and thank you Allentown Art Museum.
