Gustave Doré Libri

This authoritative retrospective of Doré’s prints and paintings showcases over 10,000 works in a spectacularly ornate package that reflects the artist’s dramatic style. If you were a literature consumer in the nineteenth century, your library likely featured his illustrations. From the Bible to Shakespeare, Balzac to Poe, Doré’s intricate and exuberant drawings brought great works to life, making them as cherished as the stories they illustrated. This magnificent volume also reveals his talents as a sculptor, painter, and cartoonist. It spans Doré’s entire career, with chapters dedicated to specific works such as The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and medieval fairy tales, each accompanied by exquisite full-page reproductions that highlight his genius in line, shading, and texture. The authors provide insights into the techniques Doré used to create his masterpieces. Fans will appreciate the book's stunning production, featuring quarter binding, gold foil stamping, embossing, a belly band, and silkscreen printing on three edges. Filled with incisive analysis and expert historical perspectives, this volume is a consummate collector’s item—expansive and sensational, just like the artist himself.

'London: A Pilgrimage' was conceived in 1868 by the journalist and playwright Blanchard Jerrold. Accompanied by the famous artist Gustave Dore, Jerrold prowled every corner of the heaving metropolis, sometimes with plain-clothes police for protection. 'London: A Pilgrimage' is a forgotten classic of social journalism, a frank and brutal look at the poverty striken, gin-swilling London of the nineteenth century, written in a perceptive, bold and gripping style.180 incredible etchings by Dore escort Jerrold on his odyssey through the pulsating city, into the Lambeth gas works, seedy opium dens and grubby bathing houses; peering curiously into the desperate lives of the flower sellers, lavender girls and organ grinders. 'London: A Pilgrimage' is an enlightening work that brings to life the chaotic and gloomy past of a great city on the cusp of modern times.Peter Ackroyd's excellent introduction sheds further light on the period and the context in which Jerrold and Dore felt compelled to reveal to the world the squalor into which London was slowly sinking.

Reproductions of Dore's scenes from the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso are accompanied by lines from Longfellow's translation