The Year's at the Spring

Quarto (10 7/16 x 8 inches; 265 x 203 mm.). [1-4], 5-127, [1] pp. Twelve full-page color plates, twelve full-page black and white plates, and twenty-two black and white vignettes. Publisher's light tan cloth over boards, front cover and spine pictorially stamped in black and red. Neat name and date (1922) on front paste-down. A Near Fine copy. The Year's at the Spring is an anthology containing poems by Hilaire Belloc, Rupert Brooke, G.K. Chesterton, W.H. Davies, Walter de la Mare, Robert Graves, Thomas Hardy, Ralph Hodgson, John Masefield, Alice Meynell, Harold Monro, James Stephens, William Butler Yeats, and others. The publisher, Harraps, commissioned the book after "the great success of the Poe illustrations and promised Bodkin, who had felt there should have been colour in the Poe, that there would be twelve colour plates as well as twelve black and white.There are some haunting images-unearthly, soulful and beautiful among these illustrations. There is none of the dread, the fear, the agonized foreboding and horror of the Poe. Here, the dead are depicted hooded in watery crimson, like exotic submarine flowers in vertically wavering strands, or feathers melting into the carriage of the beautiful Queen of the Dead. Many of the illustrations are set on, beside or beneath the surface of the sea and feature stylized submarine flora and fauna; galleons recur frequently" (Bowe). Henry Patrick Clarke (1889-1931) was an Irish stained-glass designer, graphic artist, and book illustrator who was major figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement. He drew aesthetic inspiration from French Symbolist, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco movements, all of which manifest in his elaborate images. Commissioned to illustrate Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, it was not until the second edition with eight color plates (as opposed to only halftone illustrations) that his reputation for book illustration was cemented. Bowe 4; Steenson. A Bibliographical Checklist of the work of Harry Clarke, A3.b. Near Fine.