His first commission-illustrating a trade and deluxe edition of Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen-came from George Harrap in 1913. For the next six years, he worked at the same time on illustrating the Edgar Allan Poe collection Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Clarke used the techniques he learned from working in stained glass on his macabre illustrations of Poe’s dark stories. The resulting work, Poe’s dark vision brought to stunning life by Clarke’s detailed imagery, created a sensation when the first edition was published in October 1919. Other books that Clarke illustrated include The Years at the Spring, Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault, Goethe's Faust, and Selected Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne. He also created more than 130 stained-glass windows, one of which, “The Baptism of St. Patrick,” was selected for exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.

Unfortunately, the unceasing, grueling pace of his work, perhaps along with the toxic chemicals used in the stained-glass process, cut his life short. In 1931, at the age of forty-one, Harry Clarke died in Switzerland while trying to recover from tuberculosis.

What Poe Hath Wrought BY MICHAEL CONNELLY

Happy birthday, Edgar Allan Poe. Seems strange using that name and that word “happy” in the same sentence. A tragic and morose figure in his short life, Poe is celebrated today, two hundred years after his birth, as the mad genius who started it all rolling in the genre of mystery fiction. His influence in other genres and fields of entertainment-from poetry to music to film-is incalculable. To put it simply, Edgar Allan Poe’s work has echoed loudly across two centuries and will undoubtedly echo for at least two more. He walked across a field of pristine grass, not a single blade broken. Today that path has been worn down to a deep trench that crosses the imagination of the whole world. If you look at best-seller lists, movie charts, and television ratings, they are simply dominated by the mystery genre and its many offshoots. The tendrils of imagination behind these contemporary works can be traced all the way back to Poe.