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After 90 Years, JRR Tolkien’s Translation of Beowulf Will Finally Get Published

Before he was a fantasy author, JRR Tolkien was an incredibly gifted linguist with a focus on early Old English and Norse. Now, we’ll get to see more of his translation work first hand, because his version of the 10th century epic poem Beowulf will soon be available.

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The Guardian

Official Book Page

Medieval Orthodox illuminations? Look closer.

These are actually “Lord of the Rings” illustrations by an Ukrainian artist Sergei Iukhimov. You can view many more here.

So I designed & illustrated the Centennial Edition of James Joyce’s “Dubliners" for Penguin Classics.

Early on I decided against writing any blurbs & bios, instead I wanted to approximate Joyce’s techniques in visual arrangement, medium and form. I started with an infinite crowd frozen between movement and paralysis, for the back cover I played with various links between the stories and designed the flappy layout accordingly: it opens with the beginning of “The Sisters” and closes with the ending of “The Dead,” at which point you dear reader should be in tears.

"Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."

I remember being lulled by the narrowing sweeps of the book’s final passages and feeling that the 27 slowly sailing through the tenderloin is no longer the same 27, not sure how, just the vague sensation of a translucent film newly pasted between the vision and the brain, ineluctable modality et all. Joyce’s imagery is already complete in its universality and exactitude making any attempt at illustration pointless by default and no, I’m not just dissing myself, I only wanted to put a link to these brilliant Joyce covers by Peter Mendelsund.

Prints available for $16(US) @Society6

Created by Christopher Hemsworth