Clúdach: Cover

The covers of New Hibernia Review's eleventh volume feature the American artist and engraver John DePol (1913–2004). After military service in Northern Ireland during World War II, DePol returned to his native New York, where he continued to pursue his art. The cover woodcut reflects DePol's continued fascination with Irish themes.


DePol began to study wood engraving in earnest around 1947. At the time that he created this engraving, he was a production assistant with a small commercial printing firm in New York. The job gave him hands-on experience with all aspects of the printing business. Soon, he began to attract independent commissions illustrating private press booklets, prints, broadsides, and limited edition books. In 1952, DePol's work was selected for a series of publications by The Woodcut Society, an early indication of his future eminence among American wood engravers. 


Our cover appeared in the first American edition of Liam O'Flaherty's short story collection Two Lovely Beasts, illustrated by DePol and brought out by Devin-Adair in 1950, two years after its publication in Ireland. It accompanies "The Challenge," a story with mock epic overtones in which, following a market day, a pugnacious "tinker" and a Connemara man swap glorious insults and braggadocio to no effect. Devin-Adair Publishing played a vital role in presenting post-Revival Irish writing to American readers throughout middle years of the twentieth century. 


We are grateful to Thelma DePol and Patricia G. DePol for permission to reproduce this engraving, and to the Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Libraries, which holds the John DePol papers. Readers who admire DePol's work would enjoy the informative and beautifully illustrated volume Five Decades of the Burin: The Wood Engravings of John DePol, with a foreword by Timothy Murray and introduction by David R. Godine (Jaffrey, NH and Newark, DE: David R. Godine, 2004).