These Early Illustrations For "War Of The Worlds" Are Just Fantastic

So are the folks at OpenCulture, but I'm pretty sure I've said that before.

The 1898 novel also startled its first readers with its verisimilitude, playing on a late Victorian sense of apocalyptic doom as the turn-of-the century approached. But what contemporary circumstances eight years later, we might wonder, fueled the imagination of Henrique Alvim Corrêa, whose 1906 illustrations of the novel you can see here? Wells himself approved of these incredible drawings, praising them before their publication and saying, “Alvim Corrêa did more for my work with his brush than I with my pen.”

The last one is especially wonderful/terrifying. (Also, I have no idea who Henrique Alvim Corrêa is. I know only that he's Brazilian, that his prints are pricey, and that they're amazing.)

Attribution(s): Corrêa's illustrations are provided by The British Libray, and are in the Public Domain.