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The Book of Ballads
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by Charles Vess
Sales Rank : 18171
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Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Tor Books March 7, 2006
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0765312158
ISBN-13: 978-0765312150
Product Dimensions:
9.9 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Ballads were little known to the literate world until the 18th century, when scholars began writing them down. Since then, they've received attention from folklorists, folksingers and, now, cartoonist Vess (Stardust; Rose). Vess and his collaborators put a little meat on the ballads' often bare-bones stories, adding fantastic elements not in the originals ("Barbara Allen"), giving them modern settings ("Twa Corbies"), sexing them up ("Savoy") and otherwise putting their own mark on them. Vess approaches them with an appropriately elegant style. His exquisitely detailed art delightfully recalls the Pre-Raphaelites here, Aubrey Beardsley there and elsewhere Winsor McCay or Gustave Doré. The best stories involve passion, whether celebrated ("King Henry" and "Savoy") or cautioned against ("The Demon Lover" and "The Three Lovers"), though even the least effective stories are still beautiful. "The Three Lovers" is especially noteworthy; in it, Vess makes clever, subversive use of comics language, presenting a story that pretends to be a play (complete with proscenium arch). "Tam Lin" may be the collection's consummate piece. In it, Vess goes for straight illustration, with each illustrated page facing a page of verse. Here Vess reaches the peak of his art, standing proudly with the 19th- and early 20th-century illustrators who influence him.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
In this comprehensive collection of Vess' ballad adaptations, four more join the nine that won the artist a 1997 Eisner Award. The scripters are primarily fantasy fiction rather than comics writers, though Bone author-artist Jeff Smith teams with Vess once and, not unexpectedly, affects his style: "The Galtee Farmer" features more caricatural figuration and less detail than usual for Vess. "The Three Lovers," cast as a play upon a stage, is also unusual, indebted to Little Nemo in Slumberland's Winsor McCay. Most of Vess' work reflects late-nineteenth-century influences, including Randolph Caldecott, the Kelmscott Press, and art nouveau in its swirling lines, atmospheric shading, and heavy foliage and drapery. Several writers expand the stories of particular ballads, with Midori Snyder concocting a prelude exculpatory of "hard-hearted Barbara Allen" and Charles de Lint furnishing a large, contemporary context for the skeletal (only four stanzas) "Twa Corbies." Ten of the chosen ballads come straight out of Child, the remainder from contemporary folksingers' repertoires; the text of each follows its visualization. Verbally, the adaptations are often clumsy, but Vess' artwork lushly compensates. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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