Madman's Drum [SEP] illustrator
Madman's Drum
Madman's Drum is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985), published in 1930. It is the second of Ward's six wordless novels. The 118 wood-engraved images of "Madman's Drum" tell the story of a slave trader who steals a demon-faced drum from an African he murders, and the consequences for him and his family.
Ward's first wordless novel was of 1929. Ward was more ambitious with his second work in the medium: the characters
inspired Ward to create a wordless novel of his own: "" (1929). In his second such work, "Madman's Drum", he hoped to explore more deeply the potential of the narrative medium, and to overcome what he saw as a lack of individuality in the characters in .
Production and publishing history.
Ward made 118 woodcuts for "Madman's Drum". The black-and-white images are not uniform in size—they measure from to . Cape & Smith published the book