La Guerre des mondes [War of the worlds]

Herbert George WELLS
translated by Henry-D. DAVRAY illustrated by Henrique ALVIM CORRÊA

La Guerre des mondes [War of the Worlds]
First edition of Alvim Corréa's illustrations, one of 500 numbered copies, the only issue.

Autograph signature of the illustrator on the print details of issue page.
Numbered and nominative copy # 15 for Eddy Saveruyns.
Binding in brown marbled half sheepskin.

A superb edition illustrated by the Brazilian artist Alvim Corréa, whose compositions helped shape our fantastic imagination and who, according to Wells himself, ”did more for my work with his brush than I with my pen”.

This fascinating graphic interpretation which has become iconic and inseparable from Well's work, is the work of a young painter, who died at the age of 34, and remains little known to the general public, although his original drawings for La Guerre des mondes have made records at public sale (Heritage auction, Beverly Hills, 2015 May 14). Alvim Corréa was aged 25 when he read the French translation of Well's work. He discovered a unique source of inspiration and the material of what will become the work of his life. After having produced several sketches, the young painter went to London to submit them directly to H-G Wells. The writer's enthusiasm was immediate and absolute. Preferring Corréa's drawings to those of Warwick Goble who illustrated the first English edition as well as those of Henri Lanos produced for the French translation, Well entrusts Alvim Corréa with the illustration of this first luxury edition, in French only, of which there would be only 500 copies printed and for which the young artist produces 132 illustrations, including 36 hors-texte.

"For Wells, it seems, the Corrêa depictions based on Well's descriptions may have exceeded, in some ways, the capability of the novel's ekphrastic language to convey the mechanic-yet-organic quality of the fighting machines that Wells envisioned.” (Madeline B. Gangnes, in Art and Science in Word and Image: Exploration and Discovery, 2019)
Both a legacy of the line and atmosphere of his elders, Félicien Rops (to the point that some of Alvim Corréa's drawings were wrongly attributed to him) and even more so Odilon Redon (from whom he borrows the atmosphere and the cream background of his great hors-texte works), and a forecast of Dali's great surrealist compositions, the modernity of Corréa's drawings is also due – as with Well's work – to their impressive pictorial anticipation of the apocalyptic landscapes from the future and real war of the world from 1914 to 1918.

Undoubtedly the finest edition of all, this powerful graphic interpretation will deeply influence generations of science fiction artists, including the comic strip artist E. P. Jacobs and the filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Georges Lucas.