George Annand (1890-1980) was an American graphic artist and cartographer who studied at the Art Students League in New York City. He began his career in advertising, working for the National Biscuit Company, known today as simply Nabisco. Along with his paintings of "Fig Newtons in their native habitat," Annand also produced updated images of Nabisco's marketing icon, the little child in the yellow slicker.
After the stock market crash of 1929 and his release from Nabisco, Annand started freelancing full-time as a cartographer, illustrator and book cover artist. He continued in that vein with great success until his much deserved retirement in 1970 at the age of 80. Among his many major clients were General Foods, The Waldorf Astoria, Rand McNally, Little Brown, Farrar & Rinehart, Doubleday Doran & Company and Arcadia House. During World War 2 he also drew classified maps for the United States government.
Annand's distinct way of drawing maps often incorporated aspects of
baroque and rococo style decoration as a way to make his maps feel more
romantic and engaging, but he could also draw maps to project modernity too. Author Stephen Hornsby praised his maps as "among the most refined and dignified examples of the genre…in many ways, George Annand was a cartographer’s cartographer." Annand's dustjacket illustrations were as distinctive as his maps were too, and nearly always perfectly formed, composed, and colored.
George Annand's first book cover was Right Off the Map by C. E. Montague, and it established a decorative, pictorial style that would become his signature look for years to come. Doubleday, Doran & Company published this book in hardcover in 1927.
Joseph Hergesheimer was born in 1880 in Philadelphia, and was so determined to be a painter that at the age of 17 he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, eventually studying in both Venice and Florence. But writing was where his talent really lay and he eventually made that his vocation, publishing 14 novels and 11 collections of short stories. He also wrote biographies, essays, travel sketches and an autobiography. His florid, descriptive style, part of the "aesthetic" school of writing, might be considered passe by today's readers, but it was wildly popular in its day. In a 1922 poll of critics conducted by the Literary Digest, Hergesheimer was voted the "most important American writer" working at the time. By the 1930s though his popularity had begun to wane, and his last work was published in 1934, some twenty years before his death in 1954 at the age of 74.
A lighthouse, a masted ship, and more mapping by Annand for George Allan England's Isles of Romance. The Century Company published this collection of travel themed stories in hardcover in 1929.
George Allan England (1877-1936) was a US explorer, translator and author of over 330 stories, many of which are science fiction. He had at least 5 full-length novels serialized in pulp magazines. He was also a travel writer and his Isles of Romance gathered stories based on his experiences exploring the islands of the American East Coast. Those included Anticosti, Bird Key, Sable Island, Grand Cayman, The Dry Tortugas, Cozumel, St. Pierre, the Isle of Pines, and the misty Magdalenes.
"In these colorful pages Mr. England takes you with him on his solitary
explorations to the islands off our coast-- for they all lie near-by,
either in the Caribbean or near the mouth of the St. Lawrence. He shows
you the strange customs, the little-known sights, and the romantic charm
of these almost inaccessible points of land."
To set the mood on The Romantics, a collection of love stories by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Annand highlighted a couple on a super-moon night. Farrar & Rinehart published this book in hardcover in 1929.
"An elderly couple sits on a park bench, murmuring compliments to each other, and passing gentle judgment on the crowds that pass them by. They are alone—no children, no friends, nothing but their memories to keep them company. Are they happy? Or is true love no longer enough to sustain them? While this couple sits on the bench, remembering faded passions, young people are falling in love for the first time. Middle-aged husbands and wives are taking second honeymoons, trying to recapture something that now seems like it may never have been real to begin with. Lovers are everywhere—happy and sad, jealous and fervent—and no one knows them better than Mary Roberts Rinehart. In this haunting collection, she shows us love won and lost, its ends and its beginnings, always different, and always a little bit the same."
Mary Roberts Rinehart was born in Pittsburgh in 1876, and became one of America's most popular early mystery authors. She was also one of the founders of the publishing company Farrar & Rinehart. She wrote 41 novels, the majority of those being mysteries, plus eight short story collections and one bestselling autobiography. At times her life seemed about as melodramatic as the characters she created; practicing nurse by the age of 20, doctor's wife, debtor, war correspondent-- she even survived breast cancer and an attempted murder on her life by a member of her staff. She is credited with coining the well-worn phrase "The butler did it," although the exact phrase does not appear in her novel in question, The Door. Rinehart was often called "The American Agatha Christie" by reviewers, a reference to her British counterpart, and at the time of her death in 1958 sales of her books had exceeded 10 million copies.
Another lighthouse and ship by Annand-- and a lovely figure! The Voyage Home was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1930, the second volume in a trilogy of novels by Storm Jameson about Yorkshire shipbuilders. Volume 1 was The Lovely Ship (1927), and Volume 3 was A Richer Dust (1931).
Sometimes when you learn about an author you cannot help but admire them. Storm Jameson was just such an author. She was born Margaret Ethel Storm Jameson in 1891 in Whitby, North Yorkshire, the daughter of a successful shipbuilder. Educated at the University of Leeds, Jameson would go on to be a socialist, activist, volunteer and a staunch supporter of women's right to vote. In 1913 she took part in the Women's Pilgrimage to show the House of Commons just how many women wanted to vote. 50,000 women reached Hyde Park that July 26th-- reportedly, she even tussled with police during the demonstration. After WWI, where she suffered the loss of her younger brother, shot down while serving in the Royal Flying Corps over No Man's Land, she became a devout pacifist and anti-fascist, joining groups like the International Union of Revolutionary Writers and the Peace Pledge Union, among others. But with the rise of Adolph Hitler her attitude towards war changed; "I was absolutely certain that war is viler than anything else imaginable... I don't think that now." Later she would recant Communism too. Her first marriage was a disaster though and after giving that bum the boot, she met and married a man named Guy Chapman. Of him she wrote: "We went to places, obscure ruined monasteries, small provincial art galleries, the house in which a dead philosopher spent his life, salt marshes, trout streams, some turn in a rough nameless road which offered a view of a smiling valley and a line of hills, because, although he had not seen them, he knew they were there. He made all other company a little dull." Jameson's literary legacy is nothing short of solid: she published around 60 books that were either novels or collections (some were science fiction), along with 15 additional books of reviews, essays, criticism and biography. She also penned 2 autobiographies and had 2 biographies published about her (2009 and 2014). After Jameson's death in 1986, her alma mater honored her by naming a building after her.
Annand created a full wraparound illustration for Forty Niners, a well-received, scholarly work about the California Gold Rush by noted historian Archer Butler Hulbert. Little, Brown and Company published this book in hardcover in 1931.
Archer Butler Hulbert (1873-1933) graduated from Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio, where he would later become a professor of American History. He also worked an editor, journalist, historical geographer, lecturer (Clark University), archivist and author. His bibliography lists 102 published works, 16 of which are comprised of the Historic Highways of America (1902-05). He won a $5,000 prize from The Atlantic Monthly magazine for his effort on Forty-Niners. The last 13 years of his life were spent as the Director of the Stewart Commission on Western History at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
These are the only two Crime Club dustjackets I could find by Annand, but I suspect there could be more out there; Doubleday, Crime Club's parent company, happened to be one of Annand's go-to clients. Daughter of Fu Manchu and Yu'an Hee See Laughs by Sax Rohmer were both published in 1931 by The Crime Club.
Arthur Henry "Sarsfield" Ward, who is better known by his pseudonym Sax Rohmer, was born in Birmingham, England in 1883. He was a civil servant before becoming a full-time writer. His early efforts were contained in poems, songs, monologues and comedy sketches. After he sold his first short story to Pearson's Weekly in 1903, he began to concentrate completely on short stories and serials for magazine publication. His first book was published anonymously in 1920 and his first Fu Manchu novel was serialized in 1912-13. Success soon followed. Altogether he published 13 Fu Manchu titles, but he also wrote dozens of other detective stories and horror stories and many of his works were made into successful radio programs, films, television shows, comic strips and comic books. Rohmer passed away in 1959 at the age of 76.
Leonard Alfred George Strong (1896-1958) was a respected English novelist, critic, historian and poet. He published scores of novels, poems, short stories, dramas, histories and letters, too many to count or list. Some his novels were adventures, some were mysteries, some were romances, and some, including perhaps his best work, were in the realm of the fantastic. Prior to his unexpected death in 1958 he was a director of publishing at Methuen.
Francesca (Frances Winwar) Vinciguerra was born in Taormina, Sicily, in 1900. She was brought to America when she was eight-years-old and mastered English soon thereafter. As an adult she starting writing book reviews and eventually novels and non-fiction. She published at least 17 books. Her first editor convinced her to anglicize her name. Poor Splendid Wings (Little, Brown, 1933) is about the young artists who made up the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England, and it was the first part of a biographical tetralogy covering major figures and movements of 19th Century English art and literature. Annand's dustjacket illustration highlighted many aspects of the book's artistic themes. It won the $5,000 Atlantic Monthly prize for the best nonfiction book of the year. One critic had this to say about Winwar's work: "She demonstrates a masterly handling of material as she heightens fact with imagination to recreate the lives of legendary figures from exciting epochs." Winwar passed away in 1985.
Annand created a rather wistful scene on the dustjacket of Peggy Dern's romance novel Love in the Springtime. This book was published in hardcover by Arcadia House in 1934.
Peggy Gaddis Dern was born Erolie Pearl Gaddis in Gaddistown, Georgia, in 1895. She graduated from Reinhardt College and then married John Sherman Dern, a member of a traveling minstrel group. She began her career editing periodicals and trade journals, but soon moved into writing racy romance stories for the pulps, eventually getting published in both hardcover and paperback. If she is recognized at all today it is because of her many nurse novels that were published and republished in paperback throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s. She was a grinder, averaging 3,000 words a day, six days a week. Most of her books, which are estimated to number 200 or more, were published under the names Peggy Gaddis and Peggy Dern, but she also utilized pseudonyms such as Gail Jordan, Perry Lindsay, Joan Sherman, Carolina Lee, Georgia Craig, James Clayford, Roberta Courtland, Joan Tucker, Sylvia Erskine and Luther Gordon. Gaddis died in 1966 in her home state of Georgia.
Breakfast in Bed has perhaps my favorite illustration by Annand, 'cause who doesn't want to luxuriate in bed while having breakfast. Little, Brown and Company published this novel in 1934.
Kirkus Reviews: “Breakfast in Bed is an
entertaining and thoroughly civilized sort of book, good reading from
first to last, without being a strain on the mentality or a shock to the
sensibilities. Brilliantly written, it shows a distinct advance over
her previous work, although the plot is largely dependent on interplay
of characters rather than incident. The first alarm clock goes off in
the servants' quarters of a London household -- and through the day you
go up to the midnight silence. Two other households touch the fringe;
these too you see in intimate detail. Modern, sophisticated, and at the
same time searching into the heart of things. Should interest the
regular Sylvia Thompson audience, and appeal to those who like greater
depth and subtler molding than her previous novels have shown. Promotion
and advertising to be extensive.”
Sylvia Thompson (1902-1968) was born in Scotland in 1902, and attended Somerville College in Oxford. In 1926 she married the artist Theodore Luling, with whom she had three daughters. She wrote 14 contemporary novels from 1926 to 1953, and was by all accounts a respected lecturer in the United States lecture tour. She died in Surrey in 1968, but is survived by at least one of her daughters as well as several grandchildren.
Enchanted Interlude and Honeymoon Path were published in hardcover by Arcadia House in 1935. Annand supplied the dustjacket art on both books. The book's author, Kathleen Rollins, was supposedly born and raised in North Carolina, and she is listed as having published 7 contemporary romance novels between 1935 and 1946. Apparently, she was married briefly to the prolific writer Davis Dresser, who is better known by his pseudonym, Brett Halliday. Beyond those facts almost nothing else is known about Rollins, nor have there been any formal or even informal reviews of her work published online.
Francis Xavier Talbot was an American Catholic Priest and Jesuit. He was born in Philadelphia in 1889, and at the age of 17 he entered the Society of Jesus. He received his training at St. Andrew-on-Hudson and then a Master of Arts in philosophy from Woodstock College in Maryland, where he was ordained a priest in 1921. Literature and academics were an important calling though and he was formidable in those areas, as an editor, writer, teacher, trustee, fundraiser, founder, organizer, archivist, historian and director. He pushed all his life to reduce anti-Catholic bias, publishing 5 major religious works in the process. In 1947, Talbot became president of Loyola College in Maryland. He died in 1953.
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| Map of London by George Annand. Click to Enlarge |
I'm sure every artist savors the opportunity to draw the Baker Street detective. Annand was probably no exception, heck, he even supplied a two-page map of London in the reprint edition! Arthur Conan Doyle's The Boys' Sherlock Holmes was edited and arranged by Howard Haycraft, and published in hardcover by Harper & Brothers in 1936. In 1961 it was expanded and reprinted, adding, among other things, Annand's map.
Howard Haycraft was born in Madelia, Minnesota, and was a graduate of the University of Minnesota, where he edited the student newspaper. His first job in publishing was in 1929 with H. W. Wilson, a library reference book publisher. He held a number of positions there before becoming president in 1953, and chairman in 1967. His love of detective fiction led him to edit dozens of mystery anthologies and collections, most with H. W. Wilson, but also with other publishers such as Harper & Brothers, Century-Appleton and Simon & Schuster. He won two Edgar Awards for his work. Jacques Barzun, co-author of A Catalogue of Crime, called him "... the great historian of the genre." Haycraft retired in 1970 and died in 1991 at the age of 86.
Annand was able to incorporate a map into his dustjacket illustration for Emperor Brims, a historical novel about life in South Carolina's lowlands by Herbert Ravenel Sass. Doubleday, Doran & Company published this book in hardcover in 1941.
Herbert Ravenel Sass was born in 1884 in Charleston, South Carolina. He obtained an M.A in 1906 from the College of Charleston and an honorary Litt.D in 1922. He was a journalist, naturalist and novelist, and penned a popular column about nature in the News & Courier for many, many years, where he was also on their editorial staff. He was a regular contributor to The Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, National Geographic, Collier's, Harper's, Cornell, The Atlantic Monthly and Good Housekeeping, among others. He wrote at least 14 books, including the historical novels War Drums (1928), Hear Me, My Chiefs (1940), and Look Back to Glory (1933). He died in 1958.
When the Living Strive by Richard LaPiere was published in hardcover by Harper & Brothers in 1943. It's the story of a Chinese immigrant who lives in San Francisco's Chinatown during the first part of the 20th Century. Annand's dustjacket art seems to capture the flavor of the place pretty well for such a basic drawing.
Richard Tracy LaPiere (1899-1986) was a professor of sociology at Stanford University from 1929 to 1965, and a novelist. He may still be remembered today by some of us for the two years he spent traveling across the United States by car with a couple of Chinese ethnicity. Theirs was a bold experiment for the 1930s: they visited 251 hotels and restaurants, resulting in LaPier's landmark 1934 article, "Attitudes vs. Actions." Considering the increase in hate crimes against Asian-Americans over the last couple of years, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the three of them were met with an over abundance of anti-Chinese sentiment.
Grand Parade by G. B. Lancaster was published in hardcover by Reynal & Hitchcock in 1943. A historical novel, it "gives expression to the unrecorded role that women played in the colonization of Nova Scotia." Annand took note of the book's theme by placing his females directly in the center of the picture.
G. B. Lancaster was a pseudonym used by Australasian author Edith Joan Lyttleton. She was born in Tasmania in 1873, but brought up on a sheep farm in Canterbury, New Zealand. She wrote 14 novels and more than 250 short stories, and was one of New Zealand's most widely read and respected authors during the first half of the twentieth century. At least one of her novels, The Law-bringers (1913), was made into a Hollywood film in the 1920's. Lyttleton was the recipient of the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal for Pageant (1933), which landed on the American bestseller list for six months. In the 1930's she traveled to Canada, Nova Scotia, Norway and the U.S. before before finally settling in England during WWII. She died in 1945.
ONE of George Annand's more significant literary accomplishments were the many maps he produced for a special historical series of non-fiction books called The Rivers of America. Conceived by Constance Lindsay Skinner, its first editor, the series spanned three publishers (Farrar & Rinehart, Rinehart & Company and Holt, Rinehart and Winston), and 37 years.
Skinner's unique vision extended to 24 volumes, and finally 65 volumes in all. Other editors were Carl Carmer, Stephen Vincent Benet, Hervey Allen, and of course a score of associate editors and art editors. The series started in 1937 with the publication of Kennebec: Cradle of Americans by Robert P. Tristram Coffin, and ended in 1974 with the publication of The American: River of El Dorado by Margaret Sanborn. Annand provided the maps for at least 28 of the 65 volumes, however, it would seem that he did not produce any actual interior illustrations or dustjacket art; those were done by a bevy of other artists.
"This is to be a literary and not a historical series. The authors
of these books will be novelists and poets. On them, now in America, as
in all lands and times, rests the real responsibility of
interpretation. If the average American is less informed about his
country than any other national, knows and cares less about its past and
about its present in all sections but the one where he resides, it is
because books prepared for his instruction were not written by artists." -- Contance Lindsay Skinner
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| Map of the Kennebec River by George Annand. CLICK TO ENLARGE |
Kennebec, Cradle of Americans was published in hardcover by Farrar & Rinehart in 1937. Robert P. Tristram Coffin's book launched the Rivers of America series, and it is as good an example of his enormous writing talent as you will find in any of his more than 40 books of prose and poetry.
Here's the opening to chapter five: "When the first
navigators from Europe nosed their way up the Kennebec, the tall,
handsome Abenakis were the people who gathered with the starry-eyed deer
to see them go past. The Abenakis called themselves the Dawn people,
and they were very sure they had owned the Kennebec River from the
creation of the world, when it had been handed to them, bright and new
as a dewdrop, from the hands of the Great Master of life. They were also
certain that they were the best tribe of whole Algonkin family. They
were not the simple children of nature that Europeans were expecting to
find in the forest of the New World. They were part Caliban and part
Ariel; perhaps in equal proportions, until the beast in the Europeans
brought out the wolf and the fox in them. They did not live off a rich
land without effort, lying at ease beside streams and trees which spread
banquets at their feet. They were a lean and hungry, hard-bitten
people. They were great hunters and fishers. They had to work for the
right of inhabiting the banks of the Kennebec, as later Kennebec men had
to do. It has always been a river that made men."
Carol Standish, a book reviewer at maineharbors.com, had this to say about Kennebec: "Coffin writes like a dream, retaining the Victorian ear for cadence and balance in a sentence. His observations and their precise expression are heartbreaking. Describing an imaginary bird hunting scene he says, "Guns roar, ducks squawk. Sharp bodies hurtle over with taut wings that bite into the air, flame jets, and the lovely wings that can think in every feather crumple and shatter..." Using the tools of historic research, Coffin reconstructs the daily lives of hunter-gatherers, traders and trappers, farmers, sailors, fishermen and lumbermen who people the Kennebec River valley, exalting the virtues of the place and its people. "A person cannot live among... so much granite and pungent bayberry and sweet fern and clean evergreen without getting clear and goodsmelling inside." But the book is also an elegy. In 1937 the river was thoroughly polluted by industrial and human wastes. The farms were deserted fish and game, ships and commerce had disappeared. Coffin extols the virtues of the good old days and pleads for a river clean-up. "After-all, the best crop a river can raise is a civilization."
Robert Peter Tristram Coffin, the youngest of ten children,
was born in 1892 in Brunswick, Maine. He is descended from some of the state's early settlers.
Coffin attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, where he obtained an undergraduate degree, Princeton
University where he received a Masters of Arts degree, and Oxford
University, where he earned a doctorate in literature and was a Rhodes
Scholar. After serving in the army in WWI and getting married to Ruth Neal Phillip, he taught at Wells College and
then as a
Pierce Professor at Bowdoin College. He was also an illustrator, primarily of his own works, and for several years an associate editor at Yankee magazine. In 1936 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his book Strange Holiness. Coffin died in Portland, Maine, in 1955.
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| Map of the Fraser River by George Annand. CLICK TO ENLARGE |
The Fraser was published in hardcover by Rinehart & Company in 1950. Its author, Bruce Hutchison, was born in Prescott, Ontario, Canada in 1901 but educated in public schools in Victoria, British Columbia. He began his career in journalism in Ottawa as a political reporter around 1925, the same year he married Dorothy Kidd McDiarmid. It wasn't long before he was an associate editor at The Winnepeg Free Press and then the editor of the Victoria Daily Times. From 1963 until his death in 1992 he was an editorial director and writer for The Vancouver Sun. He was considered one of Canada's foremost experts on politics and current affairs. He also wrote short stories for The American Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Collier's Weekly, Liberty and The Saturday Evening Post. His first non-fiction book, The Unknown Country, was published in 1942 to widespread acclaim and won Canada's Governor General Award. He also was the recipient of a journalism award from the Royal Society of Arts in 1961, and in 1967 he was made an officer of the Order of Canada. A Lifetime Achievement Award was created in his name to honor a person's lifetime career in the field of journalism in British Columbia.
"Shaped like a giant fishhook stuck into the Pacific Ocean, the mighty Fraser is one of the most important rivers of North America, politically, economically, and historically. Compelling the reader's interest with the power and vigour of his narrative Bruce Hutchison explores the Fraser's romantic history as one of Canada's two main channels of civilization. The Fraser's story is that of British Columbia and its people, and Mr Hutchison shows that it provides some of the richest yet least known chapters in Canadian history. These he unrolls in an unforgettable panorama, from the days of Spanish discovery to the story of the city of Vancouver, the river's most remarkable product. In its gold, its steamboating, its fur; as a fisherman's paradise, and as the largest untapped source of electrical power in North America-- the story of the Fraser is one of colour and high drama. It is exciting reading."
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| Map of the Gila River by George Annand. CLICK TO ENLARGE |
The Gila, River of the Southwest was published by Rinehart & Company in 1951. The author, Edwin Corle, was born in Wildwood, New Jersey and received his A.B from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1928, and then two years later a Masters degree from Yale. While in service in WWII he married Jean Armstrong. His first book, Mojave: A Book of Stories, was published in 1934, and was followed by numerous other novels and non-fiction books, among them Grand Canyon. He was also a regular story contributor to the various slick magazines that existed back then. His most ambitious work, a multi-volume novel called The Californians, was left uncompleted upon his death in 1956, though its manuscript can be accessed at Indiana University, along with most of his other manuscripts, letters and papers.
"The Gila: 600 miles of unpredictable liquid content; its lower course has been dry for over four years; at times it has suggested the Everglades, at others the Mississippi. It was center of an area that supported the highest pre-Columbian culture in the now-U.S.A. It was where the Spaniards expected to find the mythical Seven Golden Cities of Cibola. Later Jesuits and Franciscans established numerous missions throughout the desert lands of southern Arizona. With the arrival of the Zebulon Pike expedition in 1807 and the opening of the Santa Fe Trail, manifest destiny washed its shores. Since then it has been one of the West's most fabled spots,- bad men, Apaches, imported camel at large, the fabulous mines of the Superstitious Mountains. An addition to the series, this sets a high mark."
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| Map of the Monongahela River by George Annand. CLICK TO ENLARGE |
The Monongahela was published in hardcover by Rinehart & Company in 1949. The author, Richard Bissell, was born in 1913 in Dubuque, Iowa, and studied at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Harvard College, graduating in 1936 with a B.A. in anthropology. He married Marian Van Patten Grilk in 1938 and the two of them lived for a time on a Mississippi houseboat. Poor eyesight kept him out of WWII and so he worked river towboats in the Midwest, both as a deckhand and pilot. After the war and for the majority of his life he worked at his great-grandfather's garment factory. In the late 1940s he began to publish articles and short stories in Atlantic Monthly, Collier's, and Esquire, and to write books. His second novel, 71/2 Cents was adapted into the Broadway musical The Pajama Game. Say Darling was also adapted. But it was his novels and non-fiction books about river life that had some critics comparing him to Mark Twain. Bissell also belonged to 11 historical societies, collected antique cars and saloon pianos and had in his possession a majestic 11-foot mirror from Mark Twain's New York home. He died in 1977.
"The Monongahela: 46th in the Rivers of America Series, this takes its subject with a breeze and buoyancy that lifts it above some of the previous, perhaps more scholarly, titles. The author, Richard Bissell, is admittedly a river rat, knows the river personal experience as pilot of a ripe, converted oil drum, and with the hair raisers of towboating behind him bust loose into the story of an exciting, awful and dirty stretch of territory. From the Central Forest, to the Indians, to the early white man reporting on what he has found, Bissell shashays quickly through the stampede of crazy humans through the valley, the Revolution and the flatboats, keelboats and further emigration. He has the story of the first long stroking steamboat, the New Orleans whose maiden run took her some 2,000 miles; he gives full credit to the whiskey making, the coal and steel developments, the big tows and spills, and the dramatic explosions of the great steam boilers; he misses none of the color of the blending of Pennsylvania customs and dynamic, part European cultures, of the historic personalities that have played their part in the river's story. Quite an uproar to the telling, both of past and present events."
BELOW are a few of George Annand's other maps, commissioned by various clients throughout the years:
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| 1931 Passenger Air Map by George Annand. CLICK TO ENLARGE |
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| 1934 2nd Admiral Byrd Antarctic Expedition Map by George Annand. CLICK TO ENLARGE |
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| 1938 Map of the City of Washington by George Annand. CLICK TO ENLARGE |
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| 1951 Map of the Islands of the Bahamas by George Annand. CLICK TO ENLARGE |
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| Map of Florida by George Annand, date unknown. CLICK TO ENLARGE |
Plutarch: "Geographers... crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea... "
I DREW my one and only map when I was in my early twenties. It was based on my imagination but also on real geographic shapes, and heavily influenced by the maps I saw in the fantasy and science-fiction books I had read depicting the imaginary worlds of Delarna, The Dying Earth, The Three Kindoms, Dune, The Hyborian Age, Middle-Earth, Islandia, Lemuria, Narnia, Oz, Poictesme, and Shannara, etc. I submitted it to the fledgling fanzine Pellennorath, but its editor chose not to publish it. His comments in fact led me to bury it, and it was only recently after enrolling in my first formal drawing class that I've been inspired to revise it. If I can improve it to my greater satisfaction I will include it in its own separate post or perhaps as an addendum here.
Modern readers of the fantastic are all too aware that maps are still popular and relevant. Westeros is one example. And there are plenty of new books about maps to interest everyone: The Art of the Map, The Writer's Map, An Atlas of Imaginary Places, The Curious Map Book, The Writer's Compass, Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, etc., as well as books about actually making fantasy and role-playing-game maps. Though the best book strictly about fantasy maps was published in 1973 and reprinted in 1979. It is An Atlas of Fantasy by J. B. Post. It contains over 100 maps of imaginary lands or worlds, and its only shortcomings are that its images are poorly reproduced in black and white and the reprint edition is cheaply bound. What is needed is an updated color edition, with double or even triple the amount of map entries. Are you out there JEREMIAH BENJAMIN POST? The world needs you again!
[© August, 2021, Jeffersen]
2 comments:
I am one of George Annand's grandchildren and was thrilled to see this wonderful blog about him. I copied it in large print and had the pictures all printed as well, to give my mother, his daughter and the only child he fathered, Alice Annand McMahon, 95 and living in the Boston area. It has been a terrific joy for her, as she is going through various health challenges. Thank you so much. He was the funniest and best storyteller I've ever heard. He could keep a room laughing for hours with his amazingly colorful stories about growing up in the backwoods of Michigan in 1900, As a cartoonist for the Detroit Free Press he once made WC Fields laugh with a picture of his trick pool shots and a caption saying. "This guy makes $75 a week because he spent his youth in pool halls." He was a contract artist for Nabisco "painting wheat thins in their natural habiytat. Stories of life in New York in the 20s and so much more. One day Pete Seeger and Leadbelly came to his apartment to ask him to make poster for the Almanac Singers.
Thanks for the comments, Paul. Wow! Sounds like your grandfather led a colorful life and it's nice to hear he was funny too. Laughter and storytelling are good for the soul. George was an excellent cartographer and illustrator in my opinion. Oddly enough, I became aware of his book covers long before I knew about his map-making abilities. Today he's mostly recognized for those, but he produced a lot of book covers in his time, much more than what I was able to show in my article. It's great that you were able to print it out so that your mother could enjoy it. That makes my day! Please give her all my best, and Happy New Year to you and your family!
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