Barry Moser tells of books, art, and monsters

?I am not a scholar of 19th-century literature,? announced the famed illustrator Barry Moser at the start of his Sept. 25 Fox-Adler Lecture. But the self-described bookman?s stake in 19th-century literature covers just about everything else?from book design and illustration to typesetting, printing, and publishing magnificent volumes of the century?s literary masterpieces.

Moser?s often humorous talk, titled "Whales, Monsters, and Solitary Voyages: One Investigator?s Travels Through Nineteenth-Century Literature," marked the 20th anniversary of the Fox-Adler Lecture, which was co-founded by Norman Fox and Professor of English Catherine Golden, who organizes the lecture series.

Prior to introducing Moser to a Gannett Auditorium audience packed with students, faculty, and members of the Skidmore and Saratoga Springs communities, Golden unveiled a plaque honoring the lecture?s longtime sponsors, Norman Fox and his family, including his son, Harvey Fox, and daughter-in-law Cassie Roche Fox ?80, all present in the front row. The family was warmly applauded for supporting 20 years of lectures about artists and illustrators like George Cruikshank, Thomas Nast, and Winslow Homer along with related topics including Victorian fashions, male impersonators, the British magazine Punch, and other subjects of interest to book-lovers.

Calling Moser both bookman and artist, Golden said that his personal involvement ?in every aspect of creating beautiful private-press books brings to mind the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who attended to the presentation of a book in its entirety.? And as a book artist, said Golden, ?Moser designs woodcuts that are complex and at times paradoxical; he strives to bring out the dark side of works that others commonly see as light, and to highlight the dark side of literature that most perceive as dark.?

Moser?s talk, accompanied by projections of his works and source visuals, held the audience spellbound for more than an hour. He shared details of a number of his best-known works, including a definitive and historically accurate Moby-Dick and handsome editions of Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz published by his Massachusetts-based Pennyroyal Press.

He discussed how text helped dictate book design, typography, margin widths, and other crucial factors, and shared his penchant for putting the faces of well-known public figures into his illustrations?among them Nancy Reagan as the Wicked Witch of the West. And theorizing that Oz author Frank Baum created Dorothy as ?an American Alice,? Moser pointed out intriguing parallels in the two classics, including the ?funnel-shaped insinuations?? Dorothy?s twister and the well that Alice tumbles down?that sweep the children into fantasy worlds that include animals, queens, and monsters.

In the most powerful part of his talk, Moser demonstrated how he developed the startlingly original illustrations he created for the Pennyroyal edition of Mary Shelley?s classic Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. He first created a model from which to sketch his monster, basing it on the monster?s untoward appearance because ?his ugliness is the psychological center of the novel.? Moser and his daughter stitched a crude face out of chicken skin, stretched it over a skull, topped it with a black wig, and set it outside to dry, shrink, decompose, and be photographed as it rotted into the agonizingly nightmarish creature captured in the illustrations.

But for all its visual horror, Moser dealt gently with his monster, illustrating his portraits with the book?s only touches of color, ?a warm color as a sign for my empathy for him.? That empathy seemed to mirror Mary Shelley?s own feeling for the creature so clumsily cobbed together and cast off, unloved and doomed.

As both illustrator and maker of books, Moser has more than 300 titles to his credit, including beloved children?s stories, literary classics and the Bible. His imaginative and elegant images have earned him wide acclaim and a 1983 National Book Award for design and illustration for Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland. He is a professor-in-residence in art and printer to the college at Smith College.

Skidmore?s Fox-Adler Lecture Series is named in honor of Norman M. Fox and the late Hannah Moriarta Adler, connoisseurs and collectors of rare books. In 1967, Adler loaned her extensive collection of 19th-century books to Skidmore. After her death in 1989, Fox and his family took charge of her collection and initiated a yearly Adler Lecture. The lecture marks an annual occasion to discuss the importance of literature and art in the nineteenth century, and to celebrate ?a long romance with books?not just as texts but as works of art,? as Susan Kress, Skidmore?s vice president for academic affairs, phrased it in her pre-lecture remarks. In 2001, the event was renamed the Fox-Adler lecture, and in 2005, the Fox family gave the collection to Scribner Library. ~By Barbara Melville