|
Home Page
News
Titles In Print
Ordering
Information
Guide to 1st Ed.
Prices
Wormwood
Out Of Print
Titles
Bibliography
Tartarus Book
Design
Submissions
Links
|
 Beresford
Egan
-
by Adrian Woodhouse
-
- Hailed
as one of the few truly original British exponents of art
déco, Beresford Egan was an essential element of
bohemian London for over fifty years. He enjoyed a brief
but dazzling career as draughtsman of decadence in the
late 1920s-early 1930s, bursting upon artistic London,
aged twenty-three, with his brilliantly illustrated
lampoon on the banning of Radclyffe Hall's notorious
novel The Well Of Loneliness (1928). Over the
next six years he produced illustrations and book covers
of unparalleled beauty and ferocity for works by Aleister
Crowley, Pierre Louÿs and Charles Baudelaire. He
also illustrated his own novels and the monographs of his
first wife, the beautiful Catherine Bower Alcock.
-
- This
book celebrates the centenary of Egan's birth, presenting
seventy-nine black-and-white and twenty-five colour
illustrations-the best of his published art work from
1928 to 1934 -along with many striking drawings,
paintings and designs never seen before. These are
augmented by Adrian Woodhouse's exhilarating and
revealing account of the man and his chief talent, his
varied later careers as music-hall performer, film star,
dramatist, theatre critic, legendary 'Chelsea artist' and
lover of beautiful women. The text is adorned with
further images from Egan's long and eventful life,
including his earliest work as a cartoonist, photographs
of him in British films of the 1940s and his last
published drawings before his death in London in
1984.
-
- Please see below for examples of
Beresford Egan's illustrations
-
- Adrian
Woodhouse is a connoisseur of people and beautiful
things. A former editor of Londoner's Diary in the
Evening Standard, his previous
books include Angus McBean, Eighties In the
Shade, Vivien Leigh: A Love Affair In
Camera and Susie Cooper. He now writes
and lectures on the decorative arts and history and is
currently completing an iconoclastic book on the Jacobean
architect, John Smithson.
-
- Format:
Hardback, limited to 750 copies.
-
- ISBN:
9781872621937
-
- Price:
£45/$90 (inc. p&p worldwide)
-
- Reviews:
- "With
its informative text and reproduction of all the major
published illustrations it deserves a place on the
shelves of anyone with a specific interest in the
illustrators of the art-deco period, or the lesser known
but jhighly individual artists whose imagination and
style provided such variety and richness to twentieth
century illustration" - Mike
Heseltine, Studies in Illustration, No 37, Winter
2007 (Imaginative Book Illustration Society
-
- "This
is quite simply a beautifully illustrated, well-written
and lavishly produced biographical account of a great
artist." - Book and Magazine Collector (cover date
October 2005)
-
- "[A]
handsome limited edition volume." - The London Evening
Standard
-
- "Adrian Woodhouse's expansive and richly
informative new volume on Egan, magnificently produced by
the Tartarus Press in a limited edition of 750 copies, is
the definitive work on this unique artist, unlikely ever
to be surpassed." - Richard Dalby,
Rare Book Review
-
- "An
excellent and readable account of Egan's life, work ...
and romantic relationships." - George Locke,
Bookdealer
-
-
- 'St Stephen' by Beresford Egan from
The Sink of Solitude
-
- Dust jacket design by Beresford Egan
for Aleister Crowley's Moonchild
All images by Beresford Egan are
copyright © the Estate of Beresford Egan
Page update 23rd March 2008
|