Blind Horse Books

  Howard Pyle was an American illustrator, author and teacher who produced dozens of classic illustrated volumes, including fables, fairy tales and adventure stories. He founded his own school of art and illustration, named the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. The scholar Henry C. Pitz later used the term Brandywine School for the illustration artists and Wyeth family artists of the Brandywine region, several of whom had studied with Pyle. Some of his more notable students were N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Elenore Abbott, Ethel Franklin Betts, Anna Whelan Betts, Harvey Dunn, Clyde O. DeLand, Philip R. Goodwin, Violet Oakley, Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle, Olive Rush, Allen Tupper True, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Jessie Willcox Smith. “Building Great Collections One Fine Book at a Time” Check us out at www.BlindHorseBooks.com

 Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her work behind the Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole Park, County Galway, served as an important meeting place for leading Revival figures, and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important for the theatre's development as her creative writings. Lady Gregory's motto was taken from Aristotle: "To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people." Lady Gregory (Isabella Augusta) produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime. Lady Gregory with William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Building Great Collections, O...

  Searle produced an extraordinary volume of work during the 1950s, including drawings for Life, Holiday and Punch. His cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, the Sunday Express and the News Chronicle. His St Trinian's books, which were based on his sister's school and other girls' schools in Cambridge. He collaborated with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth books (Down With Skool!, 1953, and How to be Topp, 1954), and with Alex Atkinson on travel books. In addition to advertisements and posters, Searle drew the title backgrounds of the Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder film The Happiest Days of Your Life. Although Searle published the first St Trinian's cartoon in the magazine Lilliput in 1941, his professional career really begins with his documentation of the brutal camp conditions of his period as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese in World War II in a series of drawings that he hid under the mattresses of prisoners dying of cholera. Searle recalled, "I desperately...

  Theodor Seuss Geisel, American writer, cartoonist, animator, book publisher, and artist best known for authoring children's books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. His work includes several of the most popular children's books of all time, selling over 600 million copies and being translated into more than 20 languages by the time of his death. A Few Did-You-Know’s…… ..... Dr Seuss included the word ‘contraceptive ’ in a draft of his children’s book Hop on Pop to make sure his publisher was paying attention. The original draft of the book contains these lines: ‘When I read I am Dr Seusssmart / I always cut whole words apart. / Con Stan Tin O Ple, Tim Buk Too / Con Tra Cep Tive, Kan Ga Roo.’ We’re pleased to report that the publisher, Bennett Cerf, was paying attention, and this line was removed.   ..... Dr Seuss’ is one of the most mispronounced of all writers’ names. It actually rhymes with ‘voice’, so ‘Zoyce’ rather than ‘Zeus’. As well as using the name Dr Seuss, Theodor Se...

  Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. Everyone should read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man at least once. Why? You ask. It is a novel of shared humanity….. and The idea of being invisible is particularly acute for marginalized people in America…… The novel highlights the interdependency of us all and the complexity of identity…… The lessons in the novel will be relevant in perpetuity and present a reflective moment worthy of analysis. In contrast to his contemporaries such as Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Ellison created characters that are dispassionate, educated, articulate, and self-aware. Through the protagonist, Ellison explored the contrasts between the Northern and Southern varieties of racism and their alienating effect. The narrator is "invisible" in a figurative sense, in that "people refuse to see" him, and also ex...

  He is best known for several novels showing Americans encountering Europe and Europeans. His method of writing from a character's point of view allowed him to explore issues related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable narrators brought a new depth to narrative fiction. In addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books of travel, biography, autobiography, and criticism, and wrote plays. James alternated between America and Europe for the first twenty years of his life; eventually he settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. James was famous for his dexterous, somewhat long-winded phrases, both in his writings and in ‘real life.’  A famous anecdote survives which describes how James goes ab...

  Remembering John Steinbeck on his birthday John Steinbeck was an American novelist whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath, portrayed the plight of migrant workers during the Great Depression. DID YOU KNOW …..….. OR THAT …….In the 1980s, a rumor arose that Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath had been translated into Japanese as ‘The Angry Raisins’. This rumor was, however, false. It is a good example of how people love a good ‘lost in translation’ story. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT …… The author of 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, and the novellas Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony. John Steinbeck was born in the farming town of Salinas, California on 27 February 1902. His father, John Ernst Steinbeck, was not a terribly successful man; at one time or another he was the manager of a Sperry flour plant, th...