Maurice Richardson – Page 2

Engelbrecht lives to fight another day

The beat Engelbrecht had drawn for the early morning rise was a stretch of jet black water between the Jubilee Gasometer and the Municipal Slaughter House. A dank mist lay over the canal. The vampire bats were out in swarms. The bot-fly waltzed in virid clouds. You could hardly have had a better surrealist fishing day.

Thus Maurice Richardson in The Exploits of Engelbrecht, newly-printed copies of which I picked up this week from the Savoy Books’ office. This is the reprint of the Savoy edition which was published in 2000 and would have been out two years ago had various problems not intervened. As a result it’s inadvertently become an anniversary edition which is fitting since Engelbrecht was the first title in the line of books from Savoy’s publishing relaunch ten years ago. I’ve mentioned before that I was dissatisfied with my original design so it was a pleasure being able to rework the book slightly in a manner which better suits Richardson’s marvellous stories. The main change is a completely re-designed dust jacket done in three colours printed on textured paper; this has made the book a nice thing to handle as well as look at. A few new illustrations were added courtesy of Savoy artist Kris Guido. Kris is a far better cartoonist than I and his drawing of Engelbrecht facing one of his broomstick-riding foes adorns the front board.

Another cartoonist, Martin Rowson (currently at the Guardian), reviewed the earlier edition for The Independent on Sunday:

Far more obscure, but for my money the best book of the year, is The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maurice Richardson. Richardson, who died in 1978, was one of the old school of hacks; he later became a stalwart infester of the Colony Rooms and the sordid pubs round Soho that teemed with pissed-up talent in the 1940s and 1950s. The Exploits of Engelbrecht, the dwarf surrealist boxer, and his adventures shooting witches, boxing grandfather clocks, playing football on Mars and games of surrealist golf which last for infinity, originally appeared in Lilliput when it was at its post-war zenith. The stories were illustrated by, among others, Searle and Hoffnung. Ah, God, those were the days.

This edition is lavishly illustrated and comes with endorsements from artist James Cawthorn (who provided some illustrations and an introduction), Michael Moorcock (who provided the afterword), and JG Ballard (who provided a blurb). Since its original publication in 1950 Engelbrecht had been one of Ballard’s favourite books; I wish he could have lived long enough to see this latest edition.

Engelbrecht isn’t on sale yet as I don’t think a price has been decided on but since this is a limited run it’ll be around £25 + p&p. Any queries should be directed to Savoy Books who have a PDF of the first chapter (plus illustrations) available to read. Next up is the enormous Moorcock tome; more about that soon.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ronald Searle book covers
• Engelbrecht again
• Mervyn Peake in Lilliput

JG Ballard, 1930–2009

Panther Books paperback edition, 1968; cover painting: The Eye of Silence by Max Ernst.

If I can’t remember when I first encountered JG Ballard’s work, it’s not because I was reading him at a very early age, more that a childhood enthusiasm for science fiction made his books as omnipresent in my early life as any other writer on the sf, fantasy and horror shelves. I know that when I started to read the New Wave sf writers his work immediately stood out, not only for its originality but also for the numerous references to Surrealist painting which litter his early fiction, references which meant a great deal to this Surrealism-obsessed youth. Ballard was a lifelong and unrepentant enthusiast for the Surrealists, with repaintings by Brigid Marlin of two lost Paul Delvaux pictures prominent in one of his rooms (often featured in photo portraits). I always admired the way he never felt the need to apologise for Salvador Dalí’s excesses, unlike the majority of art critics who dismiss Dalí after he went to America. The paintings of Dalí, Delvaux, Tanguy and Max Ernst became stage sets which Ballard could populate with his affectless characters.

Once I’d encountered the New Worlds writers—Ballard, Michael Moorcock, M John Harrison, Brian Aldiss and company—and their American counterparts, especially Harlan Ellison, Samuel Delany and Norman Spinrad, there was no returning to the meagre thrills of hard sf with its techno-nerdery and bad writing. Ballard and Moorcock were the gateway drug to William Burroughs, Jorge Luis Borges and countless others, and I thought enough of his work in 1984 to attempt a series of unsuccessful illustrations based on The Atrocity Exhibition. It’s been an axiom during the twenty years I’ve worked at Savoy Books that Ballard, Moorcock and Harrison were (to borrow a phrase from Julian Cope) the Crucial Three of British letters, not Rushdie, Amis and McEwan. One of the books I designed for Savoy, The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maurice Richardson, was a Ballard and Moorcock favourite, and included appreciations of Richardson by both writers. I wish Ballard could have seen the new (and still delayed) edition of Engelbrecht but he got a copy of the earlier book. Sometimes once in a lifetime is more than enough.

• Ballardian.com
• Pages of obits and MM comment at Moorock’s Miscellany
• Ballard interview by V Vale at Arthur with an special intro by Moorcock
• Jeff VanderMeer at Omnivoracious
• Guardian | Times | Independent | Telegraph

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ballard in Barcelona
• 1st Ballardian Festival of Home Movies
• Revenant volumes: Bob Haberfield, New Worlds and others
• JG Ballard book covers

Ronald Searle book covers

Lilliput issue no. 150, December 1949.

A nice selection of Ronald Searle book covers and illustrations turns up at Caustic Cover Critic. The Lilliput cover above isn’t among them, I just happened to have it lying around as a result of putting together a new edition of Maurice Richardson’s The Exploits of Engelbrecht earlier this year. That volume is still in a holding pattern at Savoy Books but plans are afoot to see it published in the next few months. Searle produced a number of illustrations for the Engelbrecht stories, of course, although not for this particular issue.

Lilliput #150 featured Richardson’s story Engelbrecht and the Mechanical Brain as well as a St Trinian’s Christmas story by Searle and Arthur Marshall, hence the cover. It’s good to see some of the original covers for the Molesworth books on the CCC page. Geoffrey Willans’ Nigel Molesworth was the delinquent male equivalent of the St Trinian’s schoolgirls and I read all the books when they were reprinted in the early Seventies.

Via Coudal.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Engelbrecht again
• Mervyn Peake in Lilliput

Engelbrecht again

I’m surfacing this week from a busy couple of months having finished (more or less) two substantial book designs. I mentioned the redesign of The Exploits of Engelbrecht a couple of weeks ago and it’s been a pleasure to have another bash at this. The original design wasn’t bad as such, especially compared to the rudimentary first edition from 1950, it’s more that the production standards were raised so much by the Savoy titles which followed that I frequently felt dissatisfied with it. You can see the new cover above and I’ll post some additional examples nearer publication (ETA for that is still vague).

Maurice Richardson’s tales of the dwarf surrealist sportsman are classics of eccentric comedy and it’s been a privilege having the opportunity to reintroduce them to a new audience. I intended the new dust jacket to be reminiscent of an old theatre or boxing poster and the brown and red design will be printed on uncoated textured paper to augment that effect. In addition to this volume I’ve also designed an edition of Jeff VanderMeer‘s Ambergris novel Shriek: An Afterword for Wyrm Publishing. Once again, I’ll post more details of that closer to release.

So now I take a deep breath and see what’s next. There’s another book project imminent but I’ve been asked not to say anything about that for the time being (don’t you love a mystery?). In spare moments such as these I’ve been trying to keep working on the collected edition of the Reverbstorm comics I created with Dave Britton for Savoy. That series has always been an important part of my work, more important in many ways than The Haunter of the Dark, and it’s frustrating to have over 250 pages of some of my best artwork sitting around virtually unseen. I was supposed to have the book finished off last year but other projects kept intervening. One of the resolutions for this year has been to at least complete the scanning and re-lettering, then we’ll see where it fits into Savoy’s schedule. Watch this space.

Mervyn Peake in Lilliput

This month I’ve been redesigning the Savoy Books edition of The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maurice Richardson, in preparation for a reprint. This has involved scanning the covers of the issues of Lilliput, the magazine where Richardson’s tales of the dwarf surrealist sportsman first appeared, and one number of these, from May 1950, also includes a feature about nursery rhymes illustrated by Mervyn Peake. The paintings were reprinted in Mervyn Peake: The Man and his Art in 2006 but shrunk onto a single page so this is a chance to see them at a larger size. Also reproduced below is the accompanying article by Leslie Daiken and the Arcimboldo-style cover by Ronald Ferris. Some of the earlier covers by Walter Trier—all of which featured a man, a woman and a dog in a variety of guises—can be seen at VTS.

Update: For more about Mervyn Peake, see also Peake Studies.

“How many miles to Babylon?”
“Three score miles and ten.”
“Can I get there by candle-light?”
“Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light
You may get there by candle-light.”

Continue reading “Mervyn Peake in Lilliput”