No Words to Read – Just Images
A site for novices, experts, or anyone interested in wordless narratives/novels/books/stories.
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”.
- These books are not a mere series of single page images between two covers.
- 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
Most of the books listed in this site are not in the public domain and therefor we can not reproduce all of the story images – to see that 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 owner 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.