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Charles Keeping (1924–1988), “Lucy Westenra”

illustrations to ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker (Peter Bedrick Books, 1988)

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#charles keeping #lucy westenra #lucy #dracula #bram stoker #vampires #vampire woman #horror #gothic horror #horror art #dark art #art #book illustration #illustration #drawing #drawings

Charles Keeping, Hades Chariot from The God Beneath the Sea (detail)

#illustration #Charles Keeping #hades #mythical creatures

Now, Monsters Monsters Monsters (1975) is a real humdinger of a Helen Hoke anthology, and my personal favorite, because monsters, duh. And while Devils Devils Devils introduced me to the Cthulhu Mythos via faux Lovecraft, this volume introduced me to the old gent himself, with “The Outsider,” which in terms of formal construction is probably among his very best, though I’ve come to regard it as a self-insert that’s a little too on the nose.

Anyway, some all-timers in the TOC. Bradbury’s “The Foghorn” is the headliner for sure — scared the crap out of me at the time to the point that I don’t really want to revisit it in case it does so again. E.F. Benson’s slug/leech creature from “Negotium Perambulans” is another stand out, as is “Slime,” by Joseph Payne Brennan. H.G. Wells’ giant bat from “In the Avu Observatory” is pretty cool, but he’s definitely outdone by Arthur Conan Doyle’s flying jellyfish from “The Horror in The Heights.”

Charles Keeping’s work here is frickin’ amazing. Sooooo goopy. I know his work primarily from an adaptation of Beowulf and a Folio Society edition of M.R. James’ ghost stories, but neither comes close to how grisly this grouping of work is. That illustration for “Slime” is wooooof terrifying.