Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe

London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1928. The Morbid Imaginings of Poe's Extraordinary Genius...The Drawings Are Extremely Beautiful"
Illustrated by Harry Clarke

[CLARKE, Harry, illustrator]. POE, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Illustrated by Harry Clarke. London: George G. Harrap & Co., [1928].

Reprint of the second trade edition (the first with color plates). Quarto (10 9/16 x 8 inches; 269 x 203 mm.). 381, [2], [1, blank] pp. Eight color plates mounted on gray paper (including frontispiece), twenty-four black and white plates, and twenty-seven decorative tail-pieces and vignettes.

Publisher's black cloth with pictorial paper label printed in gold and black on front cover. Spine pictorially stamped and lettered in gilt, top edge gilt, others uncut. Minor rubbing to extremities. Some light foxing to endpapers and preliminary leaves.
A very good copy.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination was first published in 1919 with twenty-four black and white plates. It was republished in 1923 with all but one of the black and white plates in the 1919 edition (The Colloquy of Monos and Una illustration (facing p. 240) replaced by an extra Pit and the Pendulum illustration (facing p. 252)), three extra tail-pieces (twenty-seven in all, the ten basic designs being repeated a number of times), and eight additional color plates tipped in on gray card (cf. Bowe).

"Mr. Harry Clarke has allowed himself full liberty in attempting to express the features of Poe's Tales which differentiate them from others. In his drawings, the morbid imaginings of Poe's extraordinary genius are depicted without any attempt to soften their weird effects upon most readers. At the same time the drawings are extremely beautiful. They exhibit a wealth of delicate and intricate design such as few other, if any, living artists can command" (Harrap's advertising feature in the Bookman's Christmas Supplement, quoted in Bowe, p. 52).

Henry Patrick Clarke RHA, aka Harry Clarke (1889-1931) was an Irish stained-glass artist and book illustrator. Born in Dublin, he was a leading figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement. His work was influenced by both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements. His stained glass was particularly informed by the French Symbolist movement. He is remembered especially for his illustrations Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination. The first version was published by Harrap in 1919 and was restricted to halftone illustrations, while a second with eight colour plates and more than 24 halftone images was published in 1923, also by Harrap. It was reprinted several times in 1923, 1926 & 1928 after which it was reprinted many times by Brentano's and the Tudor Publishing Company, both of New York. This edition with the eight color plates made his reputation as a book illustrator, during the golden age of gift-book illustration in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

See Bowe, pp. 149-150. Steenson A2.j.