Yep, if you are old enough, you can now relive all your Peter and Jane memories as you can now buy over 4,500 prints from the Ladybird Books Archive. There are some excellent illustrations in the more factual books sections too, and it’s great that they have credited all the illustrators. Here’s a Guardian obit for Harry Wingfield, who died in 2002, and an interesting interview about how the illustrations were created.

If you are interested in what ruined comics and left us with ‘decades of censorship and wimpy white-bread superheroes cast as role models for the youth of America’ David Hajdu’s new book ‘The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America’ might be worth getting. This New Yorker review by Louis Menand is worth a read.

Fintan Taite sends us in another interesting post. This week it’s about a book he thought we might be interested in having a look at.

Kwik and Kwak by Oscar Fabres is an odd little slice of social history I found on eBay a couple of years back. The premise and artwork is so weird I couldn’t resist buying it. (more…)

More news from illustrator Annie West, who has just completed a new set of Illustrations for 2008. Titled “Yeats on a Train” she once again makes a mockery of the iconic poet. The exhibition also features other historical mishaps. The exhibition of Gicleé prints will be opening this summer in The Mill Theatre, Dundrum Town Centre, The 101 Talbot, Dublin 1, Gallery Zozimus Francis St., Dublin, The Blackbird Gallery Kilkenny and, surprisingly, at The Yeats building as part of the Yeats International Summer School.
To see a preview of the new show visit www.anniewest.com

The poetry collection, The Year’s at the Spring from 1920, illustrated by the peerless Harry Clarke (1889–1931) is part of a number of recent additions to Archive.org’s library of out of copyright books. Among the poets featured in this book are WB Yeats, GK Chesterton, Rupert Brooke and Walter de la Mare. There are 21 full-page illustrations in all, with many vignettes.

Of interest is their collection of rare illustrated titles, which can be downloaded as PDFs. Get browsing folks!

Link via feuilleton.

For all those with access to Digital TV, a new three part series started last night (Mon 10th Sept) on BBC4 at 9pm. To be honest I never hold much hope for TV shows about Comics and so I approached this with caution. But I found it a nice balance between telling the story for those who were new to it whilst keeping the interest of those with some knowledge. The combination of great interviews with those involved and insights from carefully selected ‘experts’ worked very well. I’m looking forward to watching the next 2 parts.
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Subtitled ‘An Illustrated Guide to Dublin’s Street Furniture’ The Antique Pavement was published in 1975 by An Taisce (The National Trust For Ireland) and was written and illustrated by Derry O’Connell (now lecturer in UCD School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy). The book is a fascinating oddity, full of anecdotes about Dublin and its overlooked street furniture. We just don’t see books like this very often in Ireland, no doubt as so much of what we see every day has links to a British dominated past. We prefer to collectively ignore the beautiful Victorian post boxes or street lamps. The drawing style of the book to me is reminiscent of Alfred Wainwright’s books, which I love, minus the detailed hand drawn lettering he favoured….
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There have been a few interesting articles recently that have focused on the design of the New Yorker magazine, both praising and critiquing its consistency, and mainly taking issue with the inside of the magazine, but what is taken as a given by both is the very central role illustration has in that design, particularly in its striking covers. Made all the more striking of course as today there is so little use of illustration so central to a magazine’s brand image…
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Charley Harper – An Illustrated Life, showcases his illustrations that appeared from 1950-1975 in the Ford Times magazines, as well as in books such as the beloved “The Giant Golden Book of Biology” in 1961, “Betty Crocker’s Dinner for Two” in 1961, and “ The Animal Kingdom” in 1968, among many others. His well loved book “Birds and Words”, first published in 1974, is considered a classic. Remarkably, however, Charley’s work has never before been published in one complete retrospective. Accordingly, this massive volume is the definitive Charley Harper book to have on your bookshelf!

It ain’t cheap at $200 but would love to get my hands on a copy. It’s my birthday soon…

An exciting new exhibition featuring a selection of 20th century travel and tourism posters will open on 26 June (Tuesday) at the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life, Turlough Park, Castlebar, Co. Mayo. The exhibition is entitled ‘Come Back to Erin’ and will run from 26 June to 14 October 2007.

These strikingly colourful posters feature the work of world famous artists like Paul Henry and the distinctive images will be a trip down memory lane for many people. (more…)