More Poe illustrations: W. Heath Robinson

I first came across W. Heath Robinson's illustrations in an old copy of The Water Babies.(I have a vague memory, too, of some pictures in a strange old book of stories - an omnibus for children, possibly a magazine annual? - including a story about Christopher Wren designing St Paul's Cathedral. It was very Victorian in tone: there were definitely some angels involved). I was surprised to find he did some illustrations for Poe as well, as Poe's macabre sensuality is pretty far removed from the kind of prim morality tale I associated with Robinson.

But Robinson's Poe illustrations are gorgeous! They're a bit crimped and stylised - his use of borders and flat 2D planes makes everything look like a stage set - but he picks up on Poe's Romanticism in a way that Beardsley and Clarke don't.

Here's a double-page illustration for "The Raven":

He's making real the dream-vision of Poe's narrator. (This is something most illustrators don't have the guts to do - Doré's rococo illustrations of the poem, which I confess I don't really like, confine themselves to depicting the narrator in his study while various visions appear to him). I love the way everything seems to swell and roll across the page, while the straight, sharp black raven slices across it. It's a more complex illustration than it first appears: the eye is drawn around and around it, and the landscape strongly suggests old Chinese scrolls. Who are the figures sensuously entwined in the foreground? Lenore and the narrator? Lenore and Death? The draperies strongly suggest a winding-sheet.


Here's his idea of Lenore:

The way her dress is draped makes reference back to Grecian clothing (echoed by the columns and arch of the foreground) and but also, again, a winding-sheet. The way the background is indistinct and faded not only gives us a sense of distance, but also alludes to death: Lenore's face is turned towards it, and it's blurring the way it would to someone whose eyesight is fading or whose eyes are growing dim. We're seeing the world through the eyes of a dying woman.


Reading up on Robinson, I discovered that he was most famous for his detailed drawings of complicated machinery made from ordinary objects, the kind of thing more familiarly known as "Rube Goldberg machines". One of the Bletchley Park decoding machines was named in his honour.