Portrait of M. Victor Hugo (1879) by Léon Bonnat. Click for hi-def image. (Via)
Categories: Art · Books · Writers Tags: painting · portraits of writers · Victor Hugo
Portrait of M. Victor Hugo (1879) by Léon Bonnat. Click for hi-def image. (Via)
Categories: Art · Books · Writers Tags: painting · portraits of writers · Victor Hugo
Colorized by Edvos. Date and photographer unknown. (Via Colorized History.)
Categories: Photography · Writers Tags: colorized images · George Orwell · portraits of writers
Graham Greene, 1964. Portrait by Yousuf Karsh.
Categories: Books · Photography · Writers Tags: Graham Greene · portraits of writers · Yousuf Karsh
Henry James, age 63
Rye, England, 1906
Photogravure by Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1882-1966
Categories: Photography · Writers Tags: Henry James · portraits of writers
Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, 1957, by Richard Avedon.
Note to my sons: once upon a time it was very, very cool to be a writer.
Categories: Photography · Writers Tags: Arthur Miller · Marilyn Monroe · portraits of writers · Richard Avedon
“Ernest Hemingway at his standing writing desk on the balcony of Bill Davis’s home near Malaga where he wrote The Dangerous Summer.” — Life Magazine, Jan. 1, 1960
I’ve wanted a standing desk like this for a long time. (Philip Roth uses one, too.)
Categories: Writers Tags: Hemingway · portraits of writers · standing desks · writing tools
Ernest Hemingway, American Red Cross volunteer, 18 or 19 years old, in Milan, 1918.
Photo credit: Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. Portrait by Ermeni Studios, Milan, Italy. (Via.)
Categories: Writers Tags: Hemingway · portraits of writers
Henry James, ca. 1900, age 57. From the collection of the George Eastman House on Flickr.
Not many photos of James exist, and none are as revealing as this. The most recognized image we have of “the master” is the iconic John Singer Sargent portrait of 1913, which shows James as the Great Man. And that is how I always pictured him — aloof, fusty, royal — until I stumbled across this amazing picture. Here James looks haunted and weary, as I imagine he must have been. A great man, of course, but still an artist who struggled, like the rest of us.
Categories: Photography · Writers Tags: Henry James · portraits of writers
Philip Roth at his home in rural Connecticut, 2004. (Via.) Photo by James Nachtwey. More about Roth’s work habits here.
Categories: Photography · Writers Tags: Philip Roth · portraits of writers · standing desks
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from the Library of Congress Flickr photo stream. The photo apparently dates from 1913 or thereabouts. I always imagined Conan Doyle as a less modern, more Victorian character than this — more like Holmes.
Flickr has lots of wonderful vintage images like this one, not all book-related obviously. I recommend the streams of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and the George Eastman House for starters, but there are lots more. If you find any needles buried in those haystacks, do let me know.
Categories: Photography · Writers Tags: Arthur Conan Doyle · Flickr · portraits of writers