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John Broadley's Books
John Broadley's Books
Apr 22, 2025 9:51 PM

Author:John Broadley

John Broadley's Books

Since 1996, John Broadley has been making, chiefly for his own pleasure, a series of remarkable little books. Each one has a tiny print run, sometimes as few as ten copies, which means that apart from a very few cognoscenti, no one has seen his extraordinary work. Until now.

John Broadley's Books will reveal to the world an artist of astonishing imagination and skill, and one with the playfulness of the great English print-makers of the thirties and forties like Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious.

In this book you will find collected a complete visual record of Broadley's books - covers, end papers, sketches, notes, lines, captions and errata. Comprising work in a multitude of mediums, this is a treasure trove of visual delights. Here are scenes from much loved classics, mysteries and obscure science-fiction adventures, from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to The Hawkline Sisters' Father: turned into an umbrella stand by his own evil creation - The Chemicals.

We travel on a journey through the bookshelves of a remarkable artist, through

Broadley's New Book of Mysterious and Melancholy Scenes in Black and Blue to the celebrated Wild for Adventure Stories - vignettes and fables in miniature - including Old Bill President Temperance League, Macabros the Monster-Maker and Frank and the Farmer, each image offering a peek at a world beyond.

Eclectic, unique, fantastical - John Broadley's Books is the most extraordinary book of books you will ever read and a brilliant new addition to the Cape Graphic novel list.

Reviews

I have greatly enjoyed the Grandville books. I think they’re superbly designed, beautifully conceived, admirably written – everything about them is terrific. They really show what the form can do. A graphic novel built on the solid foundation of a strong story.

—— Philip Pullman

The latest and last in the sequence Grandville Force Majeure is an epic of anthropomorphised sex and violence featuring a huge cast of badgers (including our hero Detective Inspector LeBrock), lizards, rats and even a Dalmation. It’s a heady mix of Holmesian ratiocination and SF steampunk technology straight out of a Jules Verne novel, lashed to a story that takes in gang violence, freemasons and secret identities. And it’s so slick. Talbot’s great facility as a comic artist gives his narrative extra oomph. The result is fast-moving and hugely entertaining.

—— Teddy Jamieson , Herald Scotland

Exceeds the standards… Of all in its league.

—— Blouin Artinfo

[Radtke's] writing is never less than lovely, and her black-and-white drawings are masterfully eloquent: at once vivid and faded. Think Shelley’s "Ozymandias", with light top notes of Alison Bechdel and Adrian Tomine.

—— Rachel Cooke , Guardian **Graphic Novel of the Month**

[Radtke is] a master of both prose narrative and visual art... In a way, what she has done in this impressive book is to revive the dead and recover the lost while illuminating a world in flux, in which change is the only constant. Powerfully illustrated and incisively writtena subtle dazzler of a debut.

—— Kirkus

Remarkable...a breathtaking mix of prose and illustration.

—— Atlantic

One of the most haunting graphic memoirs I’ve ever read... As we turn the pages on [Radtke’s] journey, we are ravaged and ravished. There is a proud tradition of graphic memoirists – of those dually equipped to wield word and image – to tell the true and deeply considered story of a life. Alison Bechdel, Roz Chast, Riad Sattouf, David Small, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman and others have done it searingly well. Add now to that list Radtke, who proves herself an equal among equals with this debut book.

—— Chicago Tribune

With elegant writing and arresting drawings, Kristen Radtke’s Imagine Wanting Only This...grapple[s] with the limits of how much understanding our past can help us comprehend our present... She is a master of silhouette and shadow, of negative space, evoking a sense of potent isolation.

—— Boston Globe

A stunning, honest meditation on loss... Radtke’s book is enchanting.

—— Huffington Post

This memoir’s realisation of urgency expresses itself in human beings’ silence, which might frustrate readers of prose memoir. But here it is an opportunity for Radtke’s readers to focus, stare, wonder – to remain within urgency itself... This is a riveting use of memoir.

—— Sarah Heston , Los Angeles Review of Books

In her exquisitely soul-, mind-, and heart-shattering debut graphic memoir, Kristen Radtke explores life's big questions surrounding grief, mortality, and the impermanence of the things – and the people – we love most.

—— Nylon

Radtke's life – and the way she beautifully elevates her deeply personal experiences into universal lessons – makes for brilliant, compelling, unforgettable art.

—— Bustle

Kristen Radtke leads us through a bleak and beautifully crafted story of heart and heartbreak – creation, connection, decay, and loss. Imagine Wanting Only This is challenging and inspiring.

—— Ellen Forney, New York Times bestselling author of MARBLES

Writer, illustrator, and editor Radtke’s graphic memoir does something difficult within just a few minimally designed, emotional pages: she transforms the over-studied experience of being a talented artist stuck in that yearning gulf between college’s purpose and life’s demands into something unique and thuddingly real.

—— Publishers Weekly

This is the work of a tremendously gifted cartoonist whose formal brilliance is indisputable, and whose sprawling narratives come to us via endlessly inventive pages. Rusty Brown is another masterpiece from Ware, and is unmissable.

—— Pete Redrup , Quietus, *Books of the Year*

An intriguing, insightful not-quite-biography of the Brontë which explores both their real and imaginary worlds.

—— Yvette Huddleston , Yorkshire Post

A tale about the collision between dreamlike places of possibility and constrained lives. None of the Brontë would reach 40. Yet their work still entrances us and Greenberg gives their tangled early creations gripping and generous life.

—— James Smart , Guardian

A vivid foundation story for the great torrent of romantic fiction that was shortly to burst forth.

—— Strong Words
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