Beresford Egan

About a month ago I ordered a couple more books from the excellent Tartarus Press, who I’ve mentioned in this Giornale a few times before (most recently here). One was their two volume edition of the short stories of Denton Welch, which I’m still working my way through, and the other was Adrian Woodhouse’s book about the graphic artist Beresford Egan (1905-84).

Egan was the Art-Deco Beardsley. He first attained some notoriety with his illustrations for a satirical account of the scandal following the publication of Radclyffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness. He followed this work (‘The Sink of Solitude’) with another on the same theme, ‘Policeman of the Lord,’ and found himself in demand as an illustrator for works variously decadent, erotic, or otherwise disreputable.

Besides more conventional commercial and journalistic work, Egan produced illustrations for the Fleurs du Mal of Beaudelaire, for a volume about de Sade, and for Pierre Louÿs’s Aphrodite and King Pausole. He also designed the original jacket illustration for Aleister Crowley’s Moonchild. In 1932 he wrote and illustrated a ‘determinedly decadent and almost wholly autobiographical novel,’ entitled Pollen.

A second, less successful novel followed, and then a third, a prequel to Pollen, tracing the fortunes of ‘Anna Beryl’ (Egan’s first wife, Catherine ‘Caterina’ Bower Alcock) before her fateful meeting with ‘Lance Daurimer’ (Egan). The present images are details of the illustrations to this book: When the Sinners Triumph. These are just about my favourite of Egan’s works, which are copyright © the estate of Beresford Egan, and have been reproduced without permission, only for as long as no-one objects to their presence on this site. Clcik on the images to see the designs in full.