HANNES BOK. A Life in Illustration.

First edition. Limited edition. Signed by the author and the editor. Publisher's original black suede, illustrated to the lower board, a pictorial onlay to the upper board and gilt titles to the spine, in the Jacob McMurray designed dustwrapper, and pictorial silk and black cloth slipcase. Brown satin bookmark. Illustrated endpapers, with an A5-size colour plate of Hannes Bok's 'Earth Goddess' loosely laid in. Tissue-guard preceding the title page. Richly illustrated throughout with black and white drawings and colour illustrations by Hannes Bok, with various artwork galleries reproducing Bok's pulp magazine cover artworks. An excellent fine copy, the binding square and firm, the suede is bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout, and without previous owners' inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the very near fine dustwrapper, which has just a touch of spotting to the underside, and is otherwise without fading, loss or tears. Housed in the lightly rubbed, structurally sound slipcase, which has a tiny scuff to the backstrip. A lovely example.

Issued in an edition of 200 copies, from which this example is numbered 100 and signed by the contributing authors Stephen Fabian, Bob Eggleton, Jill Bauman, Jason Eckhardt and Stephen Hickman in blue and black ink on the colophon. Facsimiles of Hannes Bok and Ray Bradbury's signatures in black are also present on the colophon. Nominated for the 2013 World Fantasy Award and the 2014 Locus Award for 'Best Art Book'. Widely regarded as a maverick of science fiction illustration, Wayne Francis Woodard (1914-1964), best known by the pseudonym 'Hannes Bok' (derived from Johann Sebastian Bach), was a Hugo Award-winning illustrator, artist and amateur fantasy writer. He first achieved career success as a 'Weird Tales' artist thanks to a 19-year-old Ray Bradbury, who he had first met in 1937 upon moving to Los Angeles. By summer 1939, the two had become friends, so much so that Bradbury carried samples of Bok's artwork to New York City to put forward to magazine editors at the first World Science Fiction Convention. Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales, accepted Bradbury's proposal and debuted Bok's illustrations in the December 1939 issue. From there, his art featured in more than 50 issues of the magazine until March 1954, graced the cover six times from 1940-2, and saw five of his short stories and two poems published by the magazine between 1942-51. His unique style garnered widespread acclaim and admiration, though his resistance to publisher and editor interference lost him many commissions. This comprehensive volume reproduces much of Bok's portfolio that has since become unavailable to the general public, and includes the artist's own concise autobiography and long-unavailable essay 'Hannes Bok Looks at Fantasy Art and Illustration'.