Wednesday 3 September 2008

Fritz Eichenberg

Sara Kramer of the excellent NYRB blog, A Different Stripe, pointed me in the direction of this 'Publisher's Weekly' article by Alison Morris. The article shows a number of illustrations and the covers for a beautiful-looking edition of Jane Eyre, all the work of woodcut artist Fritz Eichenberg.

Eichenberg (1901-1990) was a Cologne-born refugee from Hitler who settled in the US, where most of his amazing work was produced. You can read an interview with him from 1964 here.

This is the Jane Eyre cover from that article, and the Wuthering Heights cover that matches it.




Eichenberg also illustrated work by many of the great Russian writers, like Dostoevsky...




..Turgenev...



..and Tolstoy.



He has also illustrated Dylan Thomas's classic A Child's Christmas in Wales, as well as his film-treatment-published-as-a-novel Rebecca's Daughters. Both versions of the latter are much better than the moth-eaten edition I have, with a from-the-movie photo of Joely Richardson.







He's also done Goethe (Reynard the Fox)...



..Swift...


..Wilkie Collins (a short stories collection)...




..Carl Sandburg...



..Irmengarde Eberle...




..Anna Sewell...



..T.H. White...


..and Peer Gynt.



He's illustrated other children's books, too...





..as well as writing and illustrating several of his own...





..and being the focus of several others...




He even did the cover artwork for a vinyl audio recording of Ambrose Bierce's excellent ghost/Civil War stories.



Finally, here are some of those interior illustrations.

From Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:



From an Edgar Allan Poe short story collection:



From Tolstoy's Resurrection:



And from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre:

5 comments:

Georgie George said...

All your blog comments circa 2005/2006 just came up. Have been laughing as I read them for the first time (Boswell admitted to drinking from my toilet bowl; you hassled me rightly about my music taste). Ah, such fun.

ArtSparker said...

Very inspired by your selections/collections. Since I have already left two comments, I am going to force myself to make this my last & bookmark for a leter visit. Do you know the August Derleth Anthologies Sleep No More and Night Walks? The hardbacks have illustrations by Lee Brown Coyle, who is second to none in depicting deliquescing people. Lovely in a really creepy way.

Second, don't know where else to post to comment, but I enjoyed reading the review of Great Work of Time, a story which brings me to tears, Denys Finch-Hatton being a character who was NOT sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought and paid the price.

See you (or this site anyway) again soon

Lucy Fishwife said...

I owned that very copy of "Mistress Masham's Repose"!
Is it just me or do some of those first few pictures on your post have a hint of Edward Gorey about them?

JRSM said...

Art: Please feel free to comment away! I don't know those anthologies (though I have read a bit of Derleth), but will have to have a look. Nothing like somebody melting on a book cover. And 'Great Work of Time' really is great, isn't it? Crowley's brilliant--I still haven't read the Aegypt books, though. Must do so.

Lucy: They are quite Goreyish--I hadn't realised. Like Gorey if Gorey's people were a little more regularly proportioned.

Anonymous said...

Dear Caustic Cover Critic

Love your blog! Written with such passion and knowledge. You must be a remarkable and learned man, and your wife must be a very lucky woman.

Splendiferous work!!!