Illustration for Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe

Coburn’s first published illustrations date from 1888, but it was those he created to accompany the poems of W.H. Drummond that brought the artist recognition and the New York publishing house G.P. Putnam’s Sons as a client. He illustrated the works of such authors as Louis-Honoré Fréchette, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, Oliver Goldsmith, Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Lord Tennyson, and in fact contributed sixty-nine illustrations to the 1902 edition of Poe’s complete works. These pictures were subsequently reprinted many times.