Award-winning painter Kent Williams, legendary Frank cartoonist Jim Woodring, and the renowned Italian illustrators known as the Balbusso Twins are collaborating with Beehive Books to create lush, new illustrated editions of literary classics and forgotten gems. Having previously released six award-winning volumes with acclaimed artists Rebekka Dunlap, Brecht Evens, Dave McKean, Paul Pope, Yuko Shimizu, and Bill Sienkiewicz, Beehive Books is returning to Kickstarter with a new campaign to crowdfund three new volumes of Illuminated Editions, the company’s distinctive line of book art editions of literary classics.   

Beehive Books’s Illuminated Editions features some of the finest talents in contemporary art, singular design sensibilities, the highest production values, and a special emphasis on comics and graphic art. Each Illuminated Edition  also features original essays from luminaries of literature, art and film, including Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham 

The three new titles run the gamut: one beloved classic Roaring Twenties tale of extravagance and excess, one chilling compendium of spectral Japanese folktales, and one unjustly obscure work of mind bending visionary science fiction.

The new books in the Illuminated Editions line are:

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald, illustrated by the Balbusso Twins
Featuring an introduction by Nathan Robinson.

The Italian illustrators known as the Balbusso Twins are taking on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY, bringing out the richness and satire and sorrow that suffuses this saga of wealth and corruption and decadence and love. Their modern illustration style highlights the incredible relevance of Fitzgerald’s story, which has only seemed to increase over time. Their illustrations bring us into Gatsby’s world ― but they also bring Gatsby into ours. 

KWAIDAN & SHADOWINGS by Lafcadio Hearn, illustrated by Kent Williams
Featuring an introduction by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, a foreword by writer Kyoko Yoshida, and an essay by Bon Koizumi.

The great painter and multimedia artist Kent Williams is depicting the supernatural Japanese stories of Lafcadio Hearn, originally published in his books KWAIDAN and SHADOWINGS. These books are full of ghost stories, nightmares and strange tales ― of possessed forests, of monks tormented by demons and ghosts, of corpse brides, man-eating goblins, and undead samurai. 

 A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS by David Lindsay, illustrated by Jim Woodring
Featuring an introduction by Alan Moore.

Visionary cartoonist Jim Woodring has chosen to illustrate an unclassifiable 1920 novel by the legendary British writer David Lindsay. A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS is a baffling amalgam of mysticism, science fiction, sexual politics, and outrageous fantasy, and stands as one of the greatest works of sustained, untrammeled imagination ever achieved. Woodring’s drawings capture the writhing currents of interacting forces that lie beneath the wonderfully arcane prose. 

The Illuminated Editions books come in three print editions: a slipcase hardcover, a signed and numbered edition, and a sketched and lettered edition. All nine titles in this series are available through the latest campaign and each title also comes as a DRM-free digital PDF, which is included along with every print edition.

The standard Illuminated Editions is an oversize 9×12″ hardcover, bound in sewn signatures, and housed in an elaborately embossed and debossed die-cut slipcase, silk-screened or foil-stamped with artwork. The interior is printed on creamy, acid-free heavy-weight 140gsm uncoated paper with a fine tooth, and each edition includes a minimum of ten full page illustrations, along with numerous spot drawings, illuminated letters, and special design pieces. The entire package is designed by Maëlle Doliveux with a restrained graphic boldness, and an unparalleled eye for beauty, clarity and readability. These editions have been honored with a number of awards and prizes, winning multiple Communication Arts Design Competitions, several Bronze and Silver Cubes from the Art Director’s Club, and three nominations for the Locus Awards.