The original
House trilogy, as published in the United States during the mid-1970s, was illustrated by three different and distinct artists: Edward Gorey, Mercer Meyer, and Richard Egielski.
Egielski’s illustrations for
The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring (1976) were only his second published bookwork and are a marked departure from the widely-known pen-and-ink work of Gorey that has come to define most of Bellairs’ novels. Such was the difference that one reviewer took to call the gray-washed images “dark Americana" – something that immediately brought to our mind Grant Wood’s classic,
American Gothic. Maybe it’s the way the perfectly round frames of Rose Rita’s glasses reminded us of the circular trees in his Wood’s paintings? Anyway, Regionalism as an art form may not have been on the forefront in the 1970s when
Letter was published, but the illustrations work to describe a story that originates in the American heartland and takes us into a nightmarish world of witches and magic.
Professor Childermass has a Phi Beta Kappa key dangling from his gold watch chain [The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt; 83]. He occasionally toys with it when thinking or nervous [The Revenge of the Wizard's Ghost; 41,97].