Fiend Killing Man - from 'The Earth Fiend: a Ballad Made & Etched by William Strang'

 

William Strang

 

1892  

etching 

5 15/16 x 7 7/8" platemark 

pencil signed, lower left 

unnumbered proof; from a set of 55 proofs, outside of regular edition 

signed by printer F. Goulding in lower right; annotated "Edn 55" (edition of 55) in lower left sheet corner 

Strang 220 

ivory laid with unidentified watermark (MC Beau W?) 

published 

Elkin Mathews and John Lane, the Bodley Head, London 

KEFL355 

$300.00 

The Earth Fiend: a Ballad Made and Etched by William Strang was the Scottish artist and poet's first published book, and set the tone for his future work. Strang frequently visited themes of human struggle, and in The Earth Fiend he explores the fallout of a poor farmer's deal with the devil gone wrong.

Wrote Yale postdoctoral associate Samuel Shaw in 2014: "Although questions over the individuality of many of Strang’s works remain, the majority of his compositions from the late 1880s and the 1890s are typified by a dramatic, brooding, and often uncanny intensity. Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), one of his closest supporters, claimed that 'Strang shared with his fellow Scot, [Robert Louis] Stevenson, a relish for the grim and for tales of horror' ('Etchings' xiii). This is certainly true of his illustrated books, which represent one of his most powerful and original contributions to fin-de-siecle culture. The first of these books was The Earth Fiend, published in 1892 at the Bodley Head. The book consisted of a ballad, written by Strang, accompanied by eleven prints in different sizes and styles. Two years later, he followed it up with the similarly eccentric Death and the Ploughman’s Wife, another ballad supported by etchings, the title page of which contains a memorable image of a naked child drop-kicking a human skull." (Shaw, Samuel. "William Strang (1859-1921)," Y90s Biographies, 2014. https://1890s.ca/strang_bio/)