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Horace
Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford
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HIEROGLYPHIC TALES | ||
HIEROGLYPHIC
TALES
LOW
/ OUT OF STOCK |
Winner, 1994 PRINT CERTIFICATE OF DESIGN EXCELLENCE
The
first trade edition of these wildly imaginative tales from the eighteenth-century
originator of the Gothic genre.
Hieroglyphic Tales, seven fanciful tales by Horace Walpole, have
a fanciful history of their own: privately printed in an edition of seven,
they were distributed to a few friends only after their author's death.
Walpole himself offers this description in his preface: "The Hieroglyphic
Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the creation of the
world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral tradition, in the mountains
of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island, not yet discovered."
Newly discovered, these tales are now available, alongside equally fanciful
illustrations by Jill McElmurry, in a charming gift edition, proving true
Walpole's prediction that the Hieroglyphic Tales "will be treated
with due reverence some hundred years hence."
"Bizarre, grotesque, and often baffling, both anticipating and outdoing
modern experimental fiction." "Nonsense in the best sense of the word.... Delightful." |
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HORACE WALPOLE (1717-1797) is considered to have written the first the gothic novel with The Castle of Otranto. His other major literary works include, in blank verse, The Mysterious Mother, admired by Byron as "a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love-play." In addition to being a prolific writer, having posthumously published 48 volumes of letters, he was a "simple and restrained" publisher "of rather indifferent printing," owning the first privately held printing press in England. He lived on the banks of the Thames in London in a house he called Strawberry Hill, which he developed into a "little Gothic castle," fitted with fake pinnacles, ornamental facades, and gargoyles. | ||
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JILL MCELMURRY started telling stories and drawing pictures when she was
about six years old. In addition to her own picture book, Mad About
Plaid (HarperCollins, 2000), she has done illustrations for magazines,
posters, and book jackets. Some of her art can be viewed at her web
page. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, with her husband and their
two dogs.
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