Fifty of the world’s best wordless novels. Wordless stories published between 1918 and 1966. A bibliographic site for the original graphic novels.
A site for novices, experts, or anyone interested in wordless narratives, novels, books, or stories.
Check out the stories under the Books tab above
BUT
you may want to read the rest of this page to understand why books are listed on this site.
No Words to Read – Just Images
This site deals with a genre – wordless stories – what are they?
- They have a story arc – a beginning, a middle, and an end.
- Words are not used to assist in telling the story. Images must do it on their own. Strictly speaking, if words are used, then it’s not “wordless”.
- The story unfolds as the “reader” views a sequence of pictures in the order set by the artist, resulting in a narrative flow.
This site is improved with your contributions
This is an electronic bibliography – an ongoing work in progress.
- If you have images, advice, or experiences to share – whether it’s about rare first editions or common reprints, books omitted, corrections, points to be aware of – send it in;
- Consider writing a blog entry, be it one paragraph or ten pages. The background to a book or its author, as long as it relates to wordless novels, is welcomed;
- It all contributes to our appreciation of these “original graphic novels”; AND
- Your contributions will receive a credit line.
Note: This site uses an arbitrary cut-off date – no works created after 1966.
Copyright
Many of the books listed in this site are protected by copyright and therefor we can not reproduce the complete story – to see the full story you need to obtain a copy of the book and read it yourself. Photos of covers, publication pages, etc. and a few images in a story are shown here under the Fair Use exception in copyright law.
Photos in most cases are taken from my personal collection. In some cases I have used images obtained on the web and, where known, have given a credit line to the creator of the image. If you see an image that is yours and you do not want it shown here, please advise and I will remove it.
Lastly
- a tribute to David Beronä (1950 – 2015)
- Anyone interested in this genre owes a debt of gratitude for all the work David did, the numerous articles he wrote, and most importantly, his book – Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels. New York: Abrams Books, 2008. by David A. Beronä and Peter Kuper.
- also, I would like to thank Kurt Webb of Silent Story Books for his insights over the years.
CLICK HERE or use the BOOKS tab to view the artists and their books.