Peakeing again, and Good old Harry Boy

Well, it’s been a gently productive week, peeps. First, let’s look at the copy I made of one of Mervyn Peake’s Treasure Island illustrations. I have to say that this illustration of Long John Silver is one of my favourites. There’s something almost skeletal about the way that he is depicted here, with his skull like lower jaw, and the clear outline of his ribs. This is a malevolent Long John Silver. With Peake’s illustrations you never lose sight of the pirates as men capable of evil. They are cutthroats, every one. 

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Now I’d like to come back to Harry Rountree. I wrote in detail about this wonderful illustrator last week. One of the points I made was that you can find many of his illustrations on the web, but they are mostly those he made for Wonderland. Harry – I’d like to think that we would have got on had we lived at the same time and known each other so I take the liberty of using just his first name – did illustrate Looking Glass too, but it can be much harder to find them on the net.

Or so I thought. I’ll explain that in a moment. Last Sunday I found a reasonably priced edition of the two books that contained Harry’s illustrations. It’s a Collins Pocket Classics edition. The bookplate says that it was presented to the recipient in 1949 and that seems about right. This was a year before Harry passed away.

Now, I don’t believe that the book contains all of the illustrations Harry produced for Looking Glass. I don’t know how many he produced for Looking Glass. 21 are reproduced here including a single colour plate with Harry’s striking depiction of the Jabberwock. What makes me think they may have left some out? Well, this edition only reproduces 21 illustrations from Wonderland too, and I know from my other copy of the Harry illustrated Wonderland that he did many more than this.

Okay, so allowing for all that I’m delighted to see more of Harry’s Alice illustrations that I’ve never seen before. Only. . . well, a couple of the illustrations I have seen before, incorrectly described as illustrations of Wonderland. Then there’s this one I’ve even made a copy of.

I’ll be honest, when I made it last week I mistakenly thought that this was Alice with the Queen of Hearts. I’ve seen it described as such on the net. It is also printed on the inside over of my copy of Harry’s Wonderland – and this edition only contains the earlier book. Why? I have no idea. I didn’t realise hat this was in fact Alice with the Red Queen until I saw it in the Collins combined edition, with a caption from the text printed underneath. And it’s clearly meant to be the Red Queen when you look closely. Peaking out of her robes, her body does resemble the base of a chess piece.

Well anyway, yesterday I made my first straight copy from the book, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Here it is:-

Earlier in the week I made this copy of Alice and the Duchess from Wonderland:-

Finished with Harry for today then? Not quite. In the middle of last week I ordered a copy of an edition with Harry’s 1908 illustrations. I doubt I will end up copying these when it arrives, because I think that they were all or mostly colour plates. You know me and what happens when I try to copy coloured originals. Still, I can’t wait to see it when it’s delivered.