The Great Illustrators of Edgar Allan Poe offers a close, detailed, and nuanced analysis of five periods of art inspired by the gothic, grotesque, morbid, and macabre poetry and prose of Poe, which, the authors note, is “responsible for inspiring over eight hundred illustrators,” including painters, graphic and visual artists, and filmmakers (1). About two dozen of these artists, along with fifty of their full-color images, were selected by Tony Magistrale and Jessica Slayton for inclusion in the volume, with much of the featured artwork mostly “unknown to the general public, even to most Poe aficionados and scholars” (3). Despite the artworks’ relative obscurity, Magistrale and Slayton make an admirable case that illustration effectively solidified Poe’s place in history and expanded his relevance in culture.
After an introduction that explains that their work is grounded in Jacques Derrida’s conception of supplemental theory and offers a brief overview of Poe’s life...
