Violet Books

J. Breckenridge Ellis is a largely forgotten historical romancer, one of many who were by turns praised & condemned as close imitatators of Stanley Weyman. Garcilaso (Chicago: McClurg, 1901), sporting a gorgeous ornate binding, followed the Weyman method of a tale structured as a "memoir." It's a witty & romantic memoir of Garcelaso de la Vargo, Lord of Bartas, knight & soldier for Spain against the Moors, in the time of Isabella & Ferdinand.

A Royal Enchantress, The Romance of the Last Queen of the Berbers (New York: Continental, 1900) by Leo Charles Dessar is shown here in its first editon pictorial boards depicting the sorcerous queen working spell before smoking brazier. There are also a dozen truly spectacular illustration plates by B. Martin Justice capturing perfectly a sense of the epic, the alien, and the grotesque. The story of the rise and fall of the Prophetess and Warrior-Queen Cahina receives a paragraph in Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. That paragraph is spun out into a superior heroic fantasy that pulls no punches of violence, valor, tragedy, and horror.

Atkinson Kimball's The Prince of Mercuria (New York: Hearst's International Library, 1914) is a "Graustarkian" fantasy set in a mythic, medievalistic principality in Europe. Graustarkian fantasies were adult romances frequently given contemporary settings but with lingering codes of chivalry from former eras, while the nations, like Mercuria, the smallest principality in Europe, were completely invented. This little-known fantasy has a binding embosure & numerous interior illustrations by Clara Elsene Peck.

Marshall M. Kirkman's Iskander: A Romance of the Court of Philip of Macedon & Alexander the Great (Chicago: World Railway Publishing Company, 1903) sports an embossed action-pictorial binding plus two evocative illustration plates & a map of Macedon. Besides Alexander & his father, the tale has some marvelous scenes with Alexander's warlike mother Olympias, & his Persian bride Roxana, among so many bigger-than-life figures.

Shown here in its first edition dustwrapper is Helene Eliat's Sheba Visits Solomon (New York: Viking, 1932), a biblical heroic fantasy. The wrapper portrait of the Queen of Sheba carried under stars on a litter is by Otto Linnekogel, who also provides pen-&-ink interiors. This is a ribald, witty fantasy which in the original German was titled Saba Besucht Salomo (1930).

When I first discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs I thought his John Carter on Mars heroic fantasies were bad imitations of the exceedingly cool Otis Adelbert Kline who I found first. Well, I was in elementary school, so how was I to know. This handsome first edition of Port of Peril (Providence: Grandon, 1949) has a super-action dustwrapper, plus interior b&w interiors, by J. Allen St. John, Burroughs' most famous and wonderful illustrator. The story had originally run as a magazine serial in 1932.

Tarry Thou Till I Come by George Croly (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901) is "1st thus," a retitled new edition of Salathiel, the Wandering Jew (1827) in a resplendant art nouveau binding. This edition adds many "extras" to the supernatural classic: Numerous action-oriented & fantastic illustration plates including full-color frontis, plus line illustrations, by T. de Thulstrup; a new publisher's preface and Gen. Lewis Wallace's annotated essay; appendices including elaborate notes to text and a collection of letters from prominent Jews commenting on the work; and two closing essays by Daniel Seelye Gregory and Arthur T. Pierson. Birkhead in The Tale of Terror said, "Croly's descriptions have a certain dazzling magnificent."

Ralph Somerby in Panama (Boston: Page, 1913) by Francis Raleigh is shown here in its first edition binding. This edition has equally stunning pictorial endpapers & frontispiece plus nine other inserted plates, as well as b&w illustrations. The bizarre frontispiece shows Spanish pirates seated before a witchdoctor & is quite stunning; it's by H. C. Edwards, one of the leading swashbuckler illustrators of the era. Charles Livingston Bull does the other inserted plates, capturing Central American jungle scenes. Charles was a master at capturing the lives of beasts & general primitivism (he illustrated Jack London's Before Adam & Crump's Og for examples). That someone so carefully selected the artists for their particular special skills suggests some editor was rightly proud to have acquired this novel.

The Arabian Nights Entertainment stands among the most influential roots of heroic fantasy, inspiring such fine works as George Meredith's The Shaving of Shagpat, Sir Charles Morell's The Tales of the Genii, & Wilhelm Hauf's romantist tales. The collection pictured here in its first edition is Tales of the Caliph published as "by Al Arawiyah" (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887). The collection is especially unique in that the supernatural ingredients are given science fiction twists with fantastic inventions, time travel, & interplanetary content. The actual author was R. N. Crellin.

The success of R. N. Crellin's Arabian Nightsinspired heroic fantasy collection Tales of the Caliphwas sufficient to justify an even more beautiful presentation with his follow-up collection, Romances of the Seraglio (London: Chatto & Windus, 1894). In addition to the elegant binding there is a tissued frontispiece plus 27 other illustrations by Stanley L. Wood depicting sundry scenes of violence & beauty.