The Graphic Canon 2: From "Kubla Khan" to the Bronte Sisters to the Picture of Dorian Gray

The Graphic Canon, Volume 2�gives us a visual cornucopia based on the wealth of literature from the 1800s. Several artists��ncluding Maxon Crumb and Gris Grimly��resent their versions of Edgar Allan Poe�� visions. The great American novel�Huckleberry Finn�is adapted uncensored for the first time, as Twain wrote it. The bad boys of Romanticism��helley, Keats, and Byron��re visualized here, and so are the Bront禱 sisters. We see both of Coleridge�� most famous poems: ��ubla Khan��and ��he Rime of the Ancient Mariner��(the latter by British comics legend Hunt Emerson). Philosophy and science are ably represented by ink versions of Nietzsche��Thus Spake Zarathustra�and Darwin���On the Origin of Species.

Frankenstein,�Moby-Dick,�Les Mis矇rables,�Great Expectations,�Middlemarch,�Anna Karenina,�Crime and Punishment�(a hallucinatory take on the pivotal murder scene), Thoreau���Walden�(in spare line art by John Porcellino of King-Cat Comics fame), ��he Drunken Boat��by Rimbaud,�Leaves of Grass�by Whitman, and two of Emily Dickinson�� greatest poems are all present and accounted for. John Coulthart has created ten magnificent full-page collages that tell the story of�The Picture of Dorian Gray�by Oscar Wilde. And�Pride and Prejudice�has never looked this splendiferous!

This volume is a special treat for Lewis Carroll fans. Dame Darcy puts her unmistakable stamp on��hat else?��he Alice books in a new 16-page tour-de-force, while a dozen other artists present their versions of the most famous characters and moments from Wonderland. There�� also a gorgeous silhouetted telling of ��abberwocky,��and Mahendra�� Singh�� surrealistic take on ��he Hunting of the Snark.��br>
Curveballs in this volume include fairy tales illustrated by the untameable S. Clay Wilson, a fiery speech from freed slave Frederick Douglass (rendered in stark black and white by Seth Tobocman), a letter on reincarnation from Flaubert, the Victorian erotic classic�Venus in Furs, the drug classic�The Hasheesh Eater, and silk-screened illustrations for the ghastly children�� classic�Der Struwwelpeter. Among many other canonical works.