copyright; Curatorial Assistance, Inc. / E.O. Hoppe Estate Collection www.eohoppe.com


Alan Odle was an English book illustrator. His imaginative drawings are very powerful, but were not a success in his lifetime. In 2012 I published a book on him - The Life & Work of Alan Odle, which contains a biography, a bibliography, letters and artwork. This may be obtained from my other site www.booksandthings.co.uk. or ebay. Also available is my Bibliographical Checklist of the Work of Harry Clarke.
Martin Steenson  
? meets Aubrey Beardsley

Pen & ink drawing for Candide (page 32)
On the back is a preliminary pencil sketch for the plate Mr Wasp at his Club (page 176)

Pen & ink design (c.1920) which was used in the article Alan Odle: Master of the Grotesque published in the Studio
in January 1928. Odle sometimes drew several drawings on the same sheet, When these have been cut up later by
persons unknown, the resultant paper is oddly shaped.

  Alan's grave before and after I had it renovated

Dustwrapper by Alan for Dorothy's The Trap (1925), with hand lettering. I stated in my book that Dorothy had offered Duckworth the possibility of an Odle dustwrapper for Dawn's Left Hand and they had replied 'that it is not now usual to add decorative jackets to the superior, intellectual type of novel'. At the time I did not know of the existence of The Trap dustwrapper and has assumed all her dustwrappers were typographical, At the present time I can only find a dustwrapper on Interim which was indeed typographical, so Duckwoth were reverting to typographical dustwrappers after publishing pictorial dustwrappers on The Trap and Oberland the following year by Allinson (presumably Adrian Allinson, the couple's friend), This is also hand lettered, so might be by Odle too.