Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe with Illustrations by Harry Clarke, 1st part

Henry Patrick (Harry) Clarke was born 17 March 1889, younger son and third child of Joshua Clarke and Brigid Clarke (née MacGonigal). Church decorator Joshua Clarke moved to Dublin from Leeds in 1877 and started a decorating business Joshua Clarke & Sons, which later incorporated a stained glass division. Through his work with his father, Clarke was exposed to many schools of art but Art Nouveau in particular.

Clarke moved to London to seek work as a book illustrator. Picked up by London publisher Harrap, he started with two commissions which were never completed: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (much of his work on which was destroyed during the 1916 Easter Rising) and an illustrated edition of Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock.

Difficulties with these projects made Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen his first printed work, in 1916. It included 16 colour plates and more than 24 halftone illustrations. This was followed by an illustrations for an edition of Edgar Allan P oe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination: the first version of that title was restricted to halftone illustrations, while a second with eight colour plates and more than 24 halftone images was published in 1923. This 1923 edition made his reputation as a book illustrator, during the golden age of gift-book illustration in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Clarke's work can be compared to that of Aubrey Beardsley, Kay Nielsen, and Edmund Dulac (Wikipedia).

Frontispiece

He shrieked once - once only

MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE

Das Manuskript in der Flasche

 Incomprehensible men! Wrapped up in meditations of a kind which I cannot divine, they pass me by unnoticed.
Unbegreifliche Menschen! In Betrachtungen versunken, deren Art ich nicht erraten kann, gehen sie, ohne mich zu bemerken, an mir vorüber.


 The colossal waters rear their heads above us like demons of the deep.
 Über Wellen, die erstaunlicher sind als alle, die ich jemals gesehen habe, gleiten wir leicht wie die pfeilschnelle Seemöve dahin, und die gigantischen Wasser erheben ihre Häupter über uns wie Dämonen der Tiefe...

BERENICE

 It was a fearful page in the record of my existence.
Es war die furchtbarste Stunde meines Lebens, ein Blatt in der Geschichte meines Daseins, dicht beschrieben mit düsteren Hieroglyphen der Erinnerung.

MORELLA

The earth grew dark, and its figures passed by me, like flitting shadows, and among them all I beheld only - Morella
 ...und die Erde wurde finster, und ihre Gestalten wanderten wie Schatten an mir vorüber, und unter allen sah ich nur - Morella.

SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A LION (LIONIZING)

"Has no copy been taken?" he demanded, surveying it through a microscope.

THE ASSIGNATION
VENICE
Das Stelldichein

 It was the Marchesa Aphrodite - the adoration of all Venice
Es war die Marchesa Aphrodite - sie, die von ganz Venedig vergöttert wurde, die Herrlichste der Herrlichen, die Schönste der Schönen....

 "I had no power to move from the upright position I had assumed"
Ich aber war vor Schreck wie gelähmt und fand keine Kraft, die starre Haltung abzuschütteln...

KING PEST
König Pest

"Avast there a bit, I say, and tell us who the devil ye all are!"
"Stopp jetzt", unterbrach ihn Langbein sehr ernsthaft, "stopp jetzt damit, und sagt uns zuerst, wer zum Teufel ihr alle seid, und was ihr hier zu tun habt, aufgetackelt wie der Gottseibeiuns, und wie ihr dazu kommt, meinem ehrlichen Kameraden Will Wimble, dem Leichenbestatter, den puren glatten Ruin anzusaufen?"


METZENGERSTEIN

Indeed, the Baron's perverse attachment to his lately acquired charger - an attachment which seemed to attain new strength from every fresh example of the animal's ferocious and demon-like propensities - at length became, in the eyes of all reasonable men, a hideous and unnatural fervor.

In der Tat: Die krankhafte Zuneigung des Barons zu seinem neuerworbenen Reitpferde, die nach jedem Beweis von der wilden,  dämonischen Gemütsart des Tieres nur zu wachsen schien, musste bald allen vernünftigen Menschen unnatürlich und grässlich erscheinen.

SILENCE
A FABLE

But there was no voice throughout the vast, illimitable desert.


A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM
DER MALSTROM

Never I shall forget the sensation of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, ...
Niemals werde ich die Epfingungen von Schrecken, Grauen und Bewunderung vergessen, mit denen mich dieser Anblick erfüllte. Das Schiff schien wie durch Magie mitten im Fall an der Innenfläche eines Trichters von gewaltigem Umkreis und ungeheuren Tiefe hängengeblieben zu sein.


LIGEIA

In the excitement of my opium dreams (I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug) I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the nigh, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day.
In der Erregung meiner Opiumträume - ich war jetzt ganz und gar zum Sklaven des Giftes geworden - rief ich mit lauter Stimme ihren Namen durch das Schweigen der Nacht oder tags durch die einsamen Schattenwege des Tales...

...she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth, into thr rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and dishevelled hair; it was blacker than the raven wings of the midnight! And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me.

Eine Flut langen, gelösten Haares wallte herab, und in dem schaurigen Dunstkreis dieses Zimmers errkannte ich - dass es schwärzer war als die Schwingen der dunkelsten Nacht!  Nun öffneten sich auch langsam die Augen  des Wesens, das da vor mir stand...