Penguin Graham Greene’s by Paul Hogarth

I was recently able to pick up a job lot of Vintage Penguin books from Ebay, the fantastic thing was they were a large set of books by Graham Greene. Graham Greene’s books were illustrated by Paul Hogarth for a number of years starting in the 1970’s and 80’s. Hogarths obituary in the independant said…

They are characteristically simple colour drawings which manage to capture a mood – whether of menace or anxiety or general seediness and invariably set in an exotic location – true to the writer’s work.

Hogarth was a prolific commercial artist and draftsman, he painted a huge range of locations and was well known for the volume of production.

I’m particularly a fan of “The Power and the Glory” and “Travel Without Maps” for there very simplistic cartoon’esque feel.

Penguin by Designers (page 109-111) has an interesting section of Panguin, Paul and Graham’s back and forth as Graham tried to get his books published without illustrations, apparently something that was all the rage and considered stylish.

With 17 of Greene’s novels in my possession, I only have another 11-12 to go to get a complete set (if you include the travel books, the plays you can double that number) - although that might take even longer considering there are clearly multiple versions of different Hogarth inllustrations of the same book - see the Burnt out Case examples, so much more collecting to go.