Gropper’s only wordless novel, Alay-oop, done in reproduced drawings of crayon, pen and ink, and brush deals with failed dreams of success and jealousies. Although the mood appears light-hearted, Gropper illustrates the squalor of inner-city living.
William Victor “Bill” Gropper (Dec. 3, 1897 – Jan. 3, 1977) was a U.S. cartoonist, painter, lithographer, and muralist.
Throughout the 1920s he worked for a number of socialist magazines and in 1927 travelled to the USSR in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Following the Second World War, US censors suppressed books with socialist views such as Gropper’s.
Alay-oop (1930)
- Title: Alay-oop
- Author and Illustrator: William Gropper
- Date: 1930
- Publisher: Coward-McCann, Inc.
- Place of publication: New York
- Printer: ?
- Copyright: Coward-McCann, Inc.
- Size: 8 x 5.5”
- Dust jacket: Yes- designed by the artist
- slipcase: ?, doubtful
- Binding: red cloth binding
- Cover: dust jacket.
- Language: English titles, etc
- Unpaginated
- Printed: mostly printed on rectos; some images spread across both verso and recto
- Edition: Trade only ??
- References:
- Description: 92 unnumbered plates
- This story has a dream sequence.
- This wordless novel was done in crayon, pen and ink, brush, as well as a splattering effect, rather than woodcuts.
