Sidney Sime’s illustration The City of Never from The Book of Wonder (1912) by Lord Dunsany captures the liminality of civilization and the ancient unknown. The cityscape of domes and arches contrasts starkly with the towering, cavernous void below, scattered with glowing orbs that hint at unseen creatures. Moreover, a rider atop a winged beast ascends toward the city, with a shadow cast by an unknown source, suggesting the intrusion of a monstrous force into human spaces. The combination of the cave and the unknown shadow cast work to explores British fears of “deep time” (Worth 216) and the possibility of a primal being lurking beneath civilization.
Works Cited
Sime, Sydney. The City of Never. 1912. The Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany, John W. Luce and Company, 1912, p. 101. https://archive.org/details/bookofwonderchro01duns/page/100/mode/2up
Worth, Aaron. “Arthur Machen and the Horrors of Deep History.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 40, no. 1, 2012, pp. 215–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41413829.