Fritz Eichenberg / Edgar Allan Poe Illustrations

Fritz Eichenberg illustrated a classic edition of Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, published by Random House in 1944. This book, with an introduction by Hervey Allen, was widely known. It contained 27 stories, with a reproduction of a wood engraving for each story. In addition, there were six “vignettes” marking Parts I-VI of the collection. Fritz Eichenberg, was one of the most sought after illustrators of the twentieth century. He illustrated major books by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Sandburg, the Brontës, Dylan Thomas and others, in addition to Poe. He engraved woodblocks for each of the Poe illustrations, and he printed small editions directly from each of the blocks. They were printed in 1944, at the time the book was being published.

For some more scans from the book take a look here.


Fritz Eichenberg (American, born Germany, 1901–1990)

Fritz Eichenberg was born in Cologne, Germany, and early on in his life decided that he wanted to become “an artist with a message.” In 1918, with the end of both school and World War I, and inspired by the works of Goya and Daumier, he became an apprentice to a lithographer. Three years later he began his studies at the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig under the renowned illustrator Hugo Steiner-Prag. While a student, Eichenberg taught himself wood engraving, and began to illustrate books. After his graduation from the Academy he moved to Berlin, where he worked for ten years as a newspaper artist for Ullstein Publications. In 1933, fearful of Hitler’s increasing power, he moved with his wife and child to New York, where he soon found work illustrating books and teaching wood engraving. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s he was a relentlessly prolific illustrator, receiving commissions from a variety of publishers, while maintaining numerous other artistic commitments. His teaching venues included the New School, Pratt Institute (where he was the Chairman of the Graphic Arts Department for ten years, and one of the founders of the Pratt-Contemporaries Graphic Arts Center in 1956), and the University of Rhode Island, Kingston.