Some artists leave us too young. But they leave behind a wonderful collection of work and a wistful sense of what could have been.
One such artist is Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900-1931). This is her story...
Virginia Frances Sterrett was born in Chicago in 1900. From an early age she preferred to draw rather than play with other children.
After Sterrett's father died she began to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. Sadly she left in 1916 after her mother became ill.
At 17 Sterrett was responsible for supporting her whole family, working in art advertising agencies around Chicago to earn her living. Two years later she was diagnosed with tuberculosis.
Sterrett received her first commission at the age of 19 to illustrate Old French Fairy Tales for Penn Publishing, earning $500 for eight watercolors and 16 ink drawings.
In 1920 Penn Publishing asked Sterrett to illustrate Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne. After completing the work her family moved to Pasadena, hoping the climate would aid her health.
As Sterrett's tuberculosis grew worse she found she could only draw for a short period each day. In 1925 she started what would be her final completed work - her own interpretation of Arabian Nights.
Arabian Nights took Virginia Frances Sterrett three years to complete, working for a couple of hours each day. It was finally published by Penn in 1928.
In 1930, Sterrett started her last commission - Myths and Legends. Sadly it was never completed.
Virginia Frances Sterrett died of tuberculosis on 8 June 1931, at the age of 30.
The St Louis Post-Dispatch said of Sterrett's work: "Her achievement was beauty, a delicate, fantastic beauty, created with brush and pencil... she made pictures of haunting loveliness."
Virginia Frances Sterrett's first book - Old French Fairy Tales - is available free online. Do take a look at her wonderful work if you can: publicdomainreview.org/collections/ol……
More stories another time...
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Today in pulp I'm looking back at one of the greatest albums of all time.
What are the chances...
By 1976 Jeff Wayne was already a successful composer and musician, as well as a producer for David Essex. His next plan was to compose a concept album.
War Of The Worlds was already a well known story, notorious due to the Orson Wells radio play production. For Wayne it seemed like a great choice for a rock opera.
Today in pulp I'm looking back at a very popular (and collectable) form of art: Micro Leyendas covers!
Micro Leyendas (mini legends) are a Mexican form of fumetto, small graphic novels normally pitting the everyday hero against the weird, the occult and the unfathomable.
The art of Micro Leyendas is bold, macabre and very funny. The books often tell a cautionary tale of revenge or humiliation, much like a modern folk tale.
Today in pulp: what makes a good opening sentence for a pulp novel?
Now this is a tricky one…
The opening sentence has an almost mythical status in writing. Authors agonise for months, even years, about crafting the right one. Often it’s the last thing to be written.
Which is odd, because very few people abandon a book if they don’t like the first sentence. It’s not like the first sip of wine that tells you if the Grand Cru has been corked! Most people at least finish Chapter One.
The Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984: these weren’t the first dystopian novels. There's an interesting history of Victorian and Edwardian literature looking at the impact of modernity on humans and finding it worrying.
Today in pulp I look at some early dystopian books…
Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1863, was the second novel penned by Jules Verne. However his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel rejected it as too gloomy. The manuscript was only discovered in 1994 when Verne’s grandson hired a locksmith to break into an old family safe.
The novel, set in 1961, warns of the dangers of a utilitarian culture. Paris has street lights, motor cars and the electric chair but no artists or writers any more. Instead industry and commerce dominate and citizens see themselves as cogs in a great economic machine.