Southern Cross: A Novel of the South Seas

Los Angeles, CA: The Ward Ritchie Press, design by Joseph Simon, 1951. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. 255 pp. Duodecimo [18 cm]; red cloth over black paper boards. Gilt titling to spine, graphic device stamped in red on the front cover. A dramatic and chilling tale, told in wood engravings by the English-born Canadian filmmaker, painter, and graphic artist, Laurence Hyde. With a lovely introduction by master of the graphic image, Rockwell Kent, and a "Review of Stories in Pictures from Earliest Times" by the author. A wordless novel in the tradition of Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward which tells the story of an island in the South Pacific (clearly Bikini Atoll although the author states otherwise in the introduction) and the idyllic and simple lives of the native inhabitants whose lives change dramatically with the arrival of a [U.S.] military presence and atomic testing.