`FAUST BY GOETHE` ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY CLARKE, SIGNED, NUMBERED EDITION

"FAUST BY GOETHE" ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY CLARKE, SIGNED, NUMBERED EDITION, 1925, HARDCOVER, 255 PAGES, IN GOOD CONDITION, PREVIOUS OWNER'S NAME ON FEP. SPINE HAS BEEN PROFESSIONALLY REPAIRED

Signed and limited first edition. From signed limitation page: "Edition limited to one thousand copies for England and one thousand copies for the United States, of which this is No. 493 of the English issue. A rare edition from George G. Harrap. Grey boards. Includes eight brilliantly miasmic color plates by Harry Clarke and intriguing nouveau illustration throughout in full and partial-page designs. Highly influential renderings from the golden age of gift-book illustration in first quarter of twentieth century. Many rarities not seen elsewhere. Powerfully vivid, chiaroscuro illustrations by Harry Clarke throughout. Beautifully haunting and nighmarish renderings. 
Harry Clarke's illustrations for the 1926 edition of Goethe's Faust are said to have inspired the psychedelic imagery of the 60s. One can easily see why Clarke's disturbing yet elegant images would appeal to people seeking altered states of consciousness. Clarke, born in Dublin in 1889, came to prominence as an illustrator of imaginative literatureby Hans Christian Andersen, Edgar Allan Poe, and others though he worked primarily as a designer, with his brother, of stained glass windows. Faust was the last book he illustrated, and the most fantastic.

Despite the publisher's reservations, reviews of the 2,000-copy limited edition were largely positive. Reviewers praised the drawings for their distinctive charms and wealth of fantastic invention. One critic for the Irish Statesman wrote, "Clarke's fertility of invention is endless. It is shown in the multitude of designs less elaborate than the page plates, but no less intense." The page plates referred to eight full-color, full-page illustrations like the painting of Faust and Mephistopheles. The book contains eight full-page ink wash illustrations, six full-page illustrations in black and white, and sixty-four smaller black and white vignettes.