Readers may be forgiven for assuming that the graphic novel form began with the publication of Art Spiegelman’s 1992 Pulitzer Prize winning Maus. This assumption is wrong by several decades. The American graphic novel debuted in 1929 with God’s Man: a Novel in Woodcuts by Lynd Ward (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith), published just as the stock market crashed. Often referred to as a wordless novel, the only text to be found in the book, aside from publication information, are chapter headings.  Each image is presented as a separate plate which literally makes the novel a page turner. In an interview with the Library of America, Spiegelman said, “Ward was way ahead of his time, a visionary, in understanding the importance of the book as an object, as a container of a kind of content. His books were made with great attention to the container and he worked within it as precisely as a concrete poet works with language.”[i] God’s Man was so original and innovative that it inspired a parody almost immediately.  He Done Her Wrong by Milt Gross (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran Company, 1930) not only lampoons Ward’s refined concept – Gross’ book is subtitled The Great American Novel and Not a Word in It – No Music, too – but  Gross puts heavy borders around cartoon caricatures in a satirical homage of  Ward’s fine art style.  Ironically, Spiegelman was led to Ward by Gross’ book. Spiegelman , too, pays sly homage to Ward and his meticulous craftsmanship by through his illustrations for The Wild Party (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), Joseph Moncure March’s jazz-era poem.  In a break from his typical comix style, Spiegelman animated the poem with scratchboard drawings evocative of Ward’s woodblock prints. Lynd Kendall Ward was born in Chicago in 1905; he studied fine art at Columbia Teachers College.  But, it was while continuing his training at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking in Leipzig that he chanced upon the work of Belgian artist, Frans Masereel whose woodcuts would prove highly influential on the evolution of Ward’s style of working against the wood’s grain in a method known as wood engraving. Spiegelman noted that “Ward’s works are rich and they make you realize the ways in which a book can be something unto itself that doesn’t have to do just with information content.”[ii] In addition to his pioneering re-envisioning of what a book could be, the thematic content of Ward's wordless novels is equally progressive. Ward's stories emanate from a proletariat that fights to live dignified lives under bleak circumstances. Ward presents their collective struggles with sensitivity and compassion - insights informed by the lifework of his father, Harry F. Ward, an activist Methodist minister and lawyer whose grass-roots advocacy included serving as one of the founding chairpersons of the ACLU. In a Ward novel subject and illustration are expertly integrated to showcase the working class through carefully observed, finely wrought detail. Ward likewise varies both the size of his blocks, and the point of view within them, for maximum dramatic impact as in these panels where Ward depicts the mundane exploitation of unemployed men to work as strike breakers. Ward illustrates the desperate poverty of the men through their finely engraved gaunt faces in contrast with the corpulent jowls of the corporate goon. The depiction of the weary, slouched figures on their way to do the boss’ dirty work poignantly conveys the sad shame of men compelled to compromise themselves simply in order to subsist. Direct. Profound.  

In his third book, Wild Pilgrimage (New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1932), Ward is equally assiduous in coaxing more nuanced perspectives from the woodblock form.  He resolves a narrative problem – how to show the interiority of a character – with an elegantly straight forward solution.  Ward uses color to distinguish between subjective reverie (red and white) and objective reality (black and white). In the examples shown here, the sensuous curves that emphasize the protagonist’s romantic longings are contrasted with the blunt, angular lines of his rejection. The impact on the reader is visceral.

Ward, who died in 1985, had a long, illustrious career as an illustrator; many examples of his remarkably varied work (including his drawings for children’s books) are held by Library Special Collections. However, his wordless novels are his greatest bequest to the art of the book, and by far his most influential achievement. “To make a wood engraving,” Spiegelman noted in an essay for Paris Review, “is to insist on the gravitas of the image… Knowing that the work is deeply inscribed gives an image weight and depth.”[iii] Ward’s work epitomizes this maxim. He created six graphic novels culminating with Vertigo, (New York: Random House, 1937) an ambitious work of 230 individual engravings that required two years to produce. Thankfully, all of his graphic novels are back in print courtesy of a recent box set issued by the Library of America, and edited by Spiegelman.  Two years after a chance encounter with Ward in 1970, Spiegelman embarked on his own totemic work, Maus, which confirmed the importance of the graphic novel as vibrant literature, and, more importantly, continued the legacy of Lynd Ward’s tradition of the sublime artistry of storytelling. By Lauren Buisson, Technical Services