The Truth of Imagination

ransomcenter:

Read the full article on The Daily Beast website, “Last Letters From World War I Literary Heroes.”

English poet Wilfred Owen’s last letter to his mother. Dated Oct. 31, 1918, Owen was killed on November 4, one week before the Armistice.

The Ransom Center holds a Wilfred Owen Collection of World War I Poetry, which includes some family correspondence as well.

theatlantic:

From 1919, A Haunting Take on Edgar Allen Poe

Somewhere between Henry Holiday’s weird paintings for Lewis Carroll and Edward Gorey’s delightfully grim alphabet fall Harry Clarke’s hauntingly beautiful and beautifully haunting 1919 illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination—a collection of 29 of Poe’s tales of the magical and the macabre.

So lavish was the artwork that a copy of the “deluxe” Clarke-illustrated edition went for 5 guineas in 1919, or about $300 in today’s money. The book, an epic volume of 480 pages, was eventually reprinted by Calla Editions in 2008, and is now available for the much more reasonable $27, or free with a trip to your local public library.

Eerie and erotic, Clarke’s illustrations bring his Edwardian-era aesthetic and early Art Nouveau influences to the post-Victorian liberated fascination with sensuality.

See more. [Images: Calla Editions] (via Brain Pickings)