Tarbarrel - from "John Brown's Body" suite of 11 woodengravings

Barry Moser

In 1978 the Book-of-the-Month Club approached Barry Moser at Pennyroyal Press about illustrating the inagural book in their upcoming series, titled The American Past. It would be a 50th anniversary edition of "John Brown's Body", an epic poem by American poet and writer Stephen Vencent Benet. An account of the American Civil War, slavery, and the famed abolitionist John Brown, Benet wrote the poem while living in Paris on a Guggenheim fellowship in 1926.

Moser agreed to the commission and created eleven woodengravings for the project, the first 100 of which were pulled by Harold McGrath and set aside for the collaborators. The book was published in 1980.

An introductory note on the images reads: "Of these eleven wood engravings, eight portray men and women who suffered the outrage of slavery, the ignominy of war, & the anonymity of suffering & death. Two depict the terrible effluence of war - the broken weapons, the raped earth, the mute & still flesh. The remaining image is allegory - the cruel chevaux-de-fris, the simple, incessant thunder of burning hooves, the troubled and sick air." - Archibald MacLeish