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Lynd Ward
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lynd Kendall Ward (June 26, 1905 June 28, 1985) was an
American artist and storyteller, known for his series of wordless Lynd Ward
novels using wood engraving, and his illustrations for juvenile
and adult books. His wordless novels have influenced the
development of the graphic novel. Strongly associated with his
wood engravings, he also worked in watercolor, oil, brush and
ink, lithography and mezzotint.[1] Ward was a son of Methodist
minister and political organizer Harry F. Ward.

Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
3 Death
4 Documentary
5 Awards
6 Novels in woodcuts 1930 self portrait
7 Other works
Born Lynd Kendall Ward
8 Influence
June 26, 1905
9 See also
Chicago, Illinois, USA
10 Notes
11 References Died June 28, 1985 (aged 80)
11.1 Works cited Reston, Virginia, USA
12 External links Nationality American
Education Teachers College,
Columbia
Early life University
National Academy
Lynd Kendall Ward was born on June 26, 1905, in Chicago, of Graphic Arts in
Illinois.[2] His father, Harry F. Ward, was born in Chiswick, Leipzig
England, in 1873; the elder Ward was a Methodist who moved to
Known for Illustration
the United States in 1891 after reading the progressive Social
Aspects of Christianity (1889) by Richard T. Ely.[2] He named Wordless novel
his son after the rural town of Lyndhurst, located in the south Spouse(s) May McNeer
coastal county of Hampshire, where he had lived for two years
as a teenager prior to his emigration.[3] Ward's mother, Harriet May "Daisy" Kendall Ward, was born in
Kansas City, Missouri, in 1873. The couple met at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and
were married in 1899. Their first child, Gordon Hugh Ward, was born in June 1903, and a third, Muriel
Ward, was born February 18, 1907.[2]

Soon after birth, Ward developed tuberculosis; his parents took him north of Sault Ste. Marie in Canada
for several months to recover. He partly recovered, and continued to suffer from symptoms of the
disease throughout his childhood, as well as from inner ear and mastoid infections. In the hope of

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improving his health, the family moved to Oak Park, Illinois, where his father became a pastor at the
Euclid Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church.[4]

Ward was early drawn to art, and decided to become an artist when his first-grade teacher told him that
"Ward" spelled backward is "draw".[5] Having skipped a grade, Ward graduated from grammar school a
year early in 1918. The family moved to Englewood, New Jersey, and Ward entered Englewood High
School, where he became art editor of the school newspaper and yearbook, and learned linoleum-block
printing. In 1922, he graduated with honors in art, mathematics, and debate.[6]

Ward studied fine arts at Columbia Teachers College in New York. He edited the Jester of Columbia, to
which he contributed arts and crafts how-to articles. His roommate arranged a blind date for Ward and
May Yonge McNeer (19021994) in 1923; May had been the first female undergraduate at the
University of Georgia in her freshman year. The two married on June 11, 1926, shortly after their
graduation, and left for Europe for their honeymoon.[7]

After four months in eastern Europe, the couple settled in Leipzig in Germany for a year, where Ward
studied as a special one-year student at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking.[a] He
learned etching from Alois Kolb, lithography from Georg Alexander Mathy, and wood engraving from
Hans Alexander "Theodore" Mueller; Ward was particularly influenced by Mueller.[8] Ward chanced
across a copy of Flemish artist Frans Masereel's wordless novel The Sun[b] (1919), a story told in sixty-
three woodcuts without captions.[9]

Career
Ward returned to the United States in September 1927, with a number of book publishers in his
portfolio. In 1928, his first commissioned work illustrated Dorothy Rowe's The Begging Deer: Stories of
Japanese Children with eight brush drawings. May helped with background research for the
illustrations, and wrote another book of Japanese folk tales, Prince Bantam (1929), with illustrations by
Ward. Other work at the time included illustrations for the children's book Little Blacknose by
Hildegarde Swift, and an illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde's poem "Ballad of Reading Gaol".[10]

In 1929, Ward was inspired to create a wordless novel of his own after he came across German artist
Otto Nckel's Destiny[c] (1926). The first American wordless novel, Gods' Man was published by Smith
& Cape that October, the week before the Wall Street Crash of 1929; over the next four years, it sold
more than 20,000 copies.[11] He made five more such works: Madman's Drum (1930), Wild Pilgrimage
(1932), Prelude to a Million Years (1933), Song Without Words (1936), and Vertigo (1937).[12]

In addition to woodcuts, Ward also worked in watercolor, oil, brush and ink, lithography and mezzotint.
Ward illustrated over a hundred children's books, several of which were collaborations with his wife,
May. Starting in 1938, Ward became a frequent illustrator of the Heritage Limited Editions Club's series
of classic works. He was well known for the political themes of his artwork, often addressing labor and
class issues. In 1932 he founded Equinox Cooperative Press. He was a member of the Society of
Illustrators, the Society of American Graphic Arts, and the National Academy of Design.

Ward lived with his wife in a home in Cresskill, New Jersey to which they added a studio for their
work.[13]

Death

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Ward retired to his home in Reston, Virginia, in 1979. He died on June 28, 1985, two days after his 80th
birthday, predeceasing his wife.

Documentary
In celebration of the art and life of this American printmaker and illustrator, independent filmmaker
Michael Maglaras of 217 Films produced a new film titled O Brother Man: The Art and Life of Lynd
Ward. The documentary features an interview with the artists daughter Robin Ward Savage, as well as
more than 150 works from all periods of Ward's career. The 94-minute documentary, culled from over
seven hours of film and narrated by Maglaras, premiered at Penn State University Library's, Foster
Auditorium, on April 20, 2012, where it was warmly received. Penn State's Special Collections Library
has also become the repository for much Lynd Ward material, and may continue to receive material from
Ward family collections.

Awards
He won a number of awards, including a Library of Congress Award for wood engraving, the Caldecott
Medal for The Biggest Bear in 1953 (with a runner-up for America's Ethan Allen in 1950), and a Rutgers
University award for Distinguished Contribution to Children's Literature. He also illustrated two
Newbery Medal books and six runners-up. In 2011, Ward was listed as a Judges' Choice for The Will
Eisner Award Hall of Fame.[14]

Novels in woodcuts
Ward is known for his wordless novels told entirely through
dramatic wood engravings. Ward's first work, Gods' Man (1929),
uses a blend of Art Deco and Expressionist styles to tell the story
of an artist's struggle with his craft, his seduction and subsequent
abuse by money and power, his escape to innocence, and his
unavoidable doom. Ward, in employing the concept of the
wordless pictorial narrative, acknowledged as his predecessors
the European artists Frans Masereel and Otto Nckel. Released
the week of the 1929 stock market crash, Gods' Man would
continue to exert influence well beyond the Depression era,
becoming an important source of inspiration for Beat Generation
poet Allen Ginsberg.[15]

Ward produced six wood engraving novels over the next eight
years, including:

Gods' Man (1929)

Madman's Drum (1930) A wood block engraved by Lynd Ward
Wild Pilgrimage (1932) for plate #29 of his Prelude to a Million
Prelude to a Million Years (1933) Years
Song Without Words (1936)
Vertigo (1937)

Ward left one more wordless novel partially completed at the time of his death in 1985. The 26

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completed wood engravings (out of a planned total of 44) were published in a limited edition in 2001,
under the title Lynd Ward's Last, Unfinished, Wordless Novel.[16]

Other works
In 1930 Ward's wood engravings were used to illustrate Alec
Waugh's travel book Hot Countries; in 1936 an edition of Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein was published with illustrations by Ward.
Ward illustrated the 1942 children's book The Little Red
Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, with text by Hildegarde
Swift. His work on children's books also included his 1953
Caldecott Medal winning book The Biggest Bear, Nic of the
Woods from 1965 which he wrote and illustrated, and his work
on Esther Forbes' Johnny Tremain. He also produced a wordless
story for children, The Silver Pony, which is told entirely in
black, white and shades of gray painted illustrations; it was
published in 1973.

Ward's work included an awareness of the racial injustice to be

found in the United States. This is first apparent in the lynching
scenes from Wild Pilgrimage and appears again in his drawings
for North Star Shining: A Pictorial History of the American
Negro, by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift, published in 1947. Ward uses Beowulf wrestles with Grendel by Lynd
African American characters, as well as several different Native Ward (1933)
ones, in his book The Silver Pony.

Ward also illustrated Little Baptiste, My Friend Mac and The Wolf of Lamb's Lane which were all
written by his wife, May McNeer.

In 1941 his illustrations were used in Great Ghost Stories of the World:The Haunted Omnibus, edited by
Alexander Laing.[17]

In 1974 Harry N. Abrams published Storyteller Without Words, a book that included Ward's six novels
plus an assortment of his illustrations from other books. Ward himself broke his silence and wrote brief
prologues to each of his works. In 2010, the Library of America published Lynd Ward: Six Novels in
Woodcuts, with a new chronology of Ward's life and an introduction by Art Spiegelman.

Influence
Ward's work had an important influence on the work of later graphic artists such as George Walker,
Clifford Harper, Eric Drooker, Jarrett Heckbert, Steven McCabe and Megan Speers.

Since 2011, Ward has been honored and his name has been attached to the prestigious annual Lynd Ward
Graphic Novel Prize, which is sponsored by Penn State University Libraries and administered by the
Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.
Previous winners of the Lynd Ward Prize have been Nick Sousanis, Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki, Jim
Woodring, Chris Ware, Anders Nilsen, and Adam Hines.[18][19]

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See also
Category:Wordless novels by Lynd Ward

Notes
a. German: Staatliche Akademie fr graphische Kunst und Buchgewerbe[8]
b. German: Die Sonne
c. German: Schicksal : eine Geschichte in Bildern

References
1. "Lynd Ward." Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Vol. 80. Gale, 2009. Reproduced in
Biography Resource Center. Retrieved 1 January 2010.
2. Spiegelman 2010, p. 799.
3. Link 1984, p. 4; Spiegelman 2010, p. 799.
4. Spiegelman 2010, p. 800.
5. Spiegelman 2010, p. 801.
6. Spiegelman 2010, p. 802.
7. Spiegelman 2010, p. 803.
8. Spiegelman 2010, pp. 803804.
9. Spiegelman 2010, p. 804.
10. Spiegelman 2010, pp. 804805.
11. Spiegelman 2010, p. 805.
12. Cohen 1977, p. 191.
13. Halasz, Piri. "Ward Engravings on View", The New York Times, October 27, 1974. Accessed
September 12, 2017. "Since then, Mr. Ward has illustrated more than 100 books for adults and
children; they range from editions of Goethe's Faust and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to a number
of children's books written by his wife, May McNeer Ward.... For the last 16 years, Mr. and Mrs.
Ward have lived on Lambs Lane, in Cresskill, in a small house to which they have added a much
larger studio."
14. http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_11nom.php#nominees Archived June 11, 2011, at
WebCite
15. Allen Ginsberg, Illuminated Poems, illus, Eric Drooker (New York: Four Walls, 1996), xii
16. http://www.bpib.com/lyndward.htm
17. Laing, Alexander, ed. Great Ghost Stories of the World:The Haunted Omnibus Blue Ribbon
Books, Garden City, NY 1941
18. https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/lynd-ward-graphic-novel-prize/press-releases
19. http://news.psu.edu/story/405155/2016/04/19/arts-and-entertainment/penn-state-announces-
winner-lynd-ward-prize-graphic

Works cited

Cohen, Martin S. (April 1977). "The Novel in Woodcuts: A Handbook". Journal of Modern
Literature. Indiana University Press. 6 (2): 171195. JSTOR 3831165.
Link, Eugene P. (1984). Labor-Religion Prophet: The Times and Life of Harry F. Ward. Westview
Press.
Spiegelman, Art (2010). "Chronology". In Spiegelman, Art. Lynd Ward: God's Man, Madman's

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Drum, Wild Pilgrimage. Library of America. pp. 799833. ISBN 978-1-59853-080-3.

External links
Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize
Bio at Rutgers University Libraries
"Silent Beauty" by Christopher Capozzola, In These Times, October 14, 2005
Columbus Museum of Art Lynd Ward's work Company Town (click on picture for larger version)
http://www.bpib.com/lyndward.htm
Guide to the Lynd Ward papers at the University of Oregon
Lynd Ward's illustrations for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Works by Lynd Ward at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Lynd Ward at Internet Archive
www.artistarchive.com A searchable catalogue listing of over 600 prints by this artist, many with
images.
Comic artist and historian Art Spiegelman interviewed about the significance of Lynd Ward
Grant F. Scott, "Victor's Secret: Queer Gothic in Lynd Ward's Illustrations to Frankenstein (1934)"
Word & Image 28 (AprilJune 2012): 206-232. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080
/02666286.2012.687545
Lynd Ward discussed in Conversations from Penn State interview

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