Early Dust-Wrappers of The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison

The Worm Ouroboros, by E.R. Eddison (1882-1945), was first published by Jonathan Cape of London in May 1922, with interior illustrations and a dust-wrapper design by Eddison's brother-in-law, Keith Henderson (1883-1982). Here is the front dust-wrapper of the 1922 edition.

An American edition, published by Albert & Charles Boni of New York, appeared four years later, to the month, in May 1926.  It retained all the interior illustrations by Keith Henderson, yet has a new dust-wrapper illustration. Here is the wraparound dust-wrapper of the 1926 edition, followed by the same art's appearance on the endpapers.

The artwork is uncredited, and a bookseller recently catalogued it as by Henderson, but it's not in Henderson's usual style, and I have long understood that the art was by someone else. But by whom? Here  is a closeup of the artist's recognizable monogram from the lower righthand corner:

The stylized "A"monogram was regularly used by the Russian-born American artist Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965). Here is a similar worm-styled creature from a closely contemporary book, The Wonder Smith and His Son (1927) by Ella Young, which was wholly illustrated by Artzybasheff. This art is spread over two facing pages.

Notice the stylized "A" monogram at the upper right of the art.  And compare the eye-motifs running all along the top of the serpents' bodies in both illustrations. The motifs are closely similar. Clearly the art on the dust-wrapper of The Worm Ouroboros was by Artzybasheff, not Henderson.

Artzybasheff was also contracted to illustrate Ella Young's subsequent book, A Tangle-Coated Horse, but when it came out in 1929 it had illustrations by Vera Bock.  Interestingly, this conundrum is solved in the correspondence between Ella Young and Kenneth Morris.  Ella Young's publisher was Longmans, Green of New York, and it was on her recommendation that Kenneth Morris placed his novel Book of the Three Dragons with Longmans.  Morris was very angry to learn that Longmans decided to cancel the contract with Artzybasheff for Ella Young's book, and have Artzybasheff illustrate Book of the Three Dragons instead.  Yet when Longmans published Book of the Three Dragons in 1930, it was with illustrations by yet another artist, Ferdinand Huszti Horvath. In October 1930 Morris wrote to Ella Young that "I am content with having escaped Artzybasheff—heresy though it be to say so!"

What about Artzbasheff's art did Morris find so objectionable?  His letters make it clear that Morris thought that "dragons are the most beautiful and graceful of God's creatures: surpassing the swan for grace, the gazelle for beauty."  Artzybasheff's dragons, particularly the one on The Worm Ouroboros, are more comical than beautiful, and not representing the elegant and spiritual creatures as envisioned by Morris. As talented as Artzybasheff clearly was, his art was not a good match for the writings of Kenneth Morris. Nor for those of E.R. Eddison as well.