Edgar Rice Burroughs Library Of Illustration
(1976 - Russ Cochran)

These three volumes are usually found together as a costly set. They were originally marketed as a subscription set (specifically numbered as limited) and produced over a couple of years as Russ Cochran worked with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate and many original art-holders to get the works collected & photographed. While each volume is indeed on the 'too-large' side of the scales, they are not identical in thickness. A number factors make each of their contents extremely different.

Vol.1 This volume hews closest to the expectations of an art-book. The meat is 134 'plates' of paintings, ink-washes and drawings, each faced with a page usually reprinting the original text pages that the art could be considered illustrating, though about a third of such pages includes commentary on the work itself or its artist. You can add to that, four foldout pages each used to present one of the powerful double-page spreads. The volume is meant to mainly be a showcase of the work of J. Allen St. John (121 pieces), but the loose theme of being the 'early works' illustrating Burrough's stories also allows for coverage of other artists, namely: Fred J. Arting (2), P.J. Monahan, Clinton Pettee, Frank Schoonover (3), and N.C. Wyeth.

Vol.2 [-BELOW THE LINE-] This volume devotes so many pages to sequential art, 184, as well as another 33 to text and photographs, that it can't climb up onto The List, leaving only 82 pages for single image art (73 of those as featured large reproductions). There are also two foldouts found here. The artists getting 'well-presented' this time are: John Coleman Burroughs (46), Studley Burroughs (22), Morris (Mo) Gollub (6), and J.Allen St. John (4).

Vol.3 Volume 3, by itself, would just barely get itself up onto The List with just 105 large reproductions of paintings & drawings, out of the book's 247 pages (and note that there are no fold-outs). There is a presentation of many title-pages/frontispieces produced by Roy Krenkel and Frank Frazetta for Burrough's books, but most are produced at about a fifth of this book's page size, which means that the included art-image is just inadequate. I'm speculating that it was decided that the blowing them up beyond their original presentation would have looked poor. The rest of the book is more sequential art and extensive photographs & interviews with Krenkel & Frazetta as subjects. The number of large reproduced photographs of the two men that each have only the slightest variation from the last one suggests that the design was to burn pages that had been earmarked for Frazetta art that this publisher could not get permission to reprint. The 'well-presented' artists gathered here are: Mahlon Blaine, Reed Crandall (26), Ed Emshwiller, Frank Frazetta (31)*, Morris (Mo) Gollub, Burne Hogarth, Roy Krenkel (32), Rex Maxon (2), Frank Schoonover (3), and J. Allen St. John.

* - Note that ten of the Frazetta pieces here have not been 'well-presented' in his own collections up on The List.

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