The illustration by Sidney Sime titled, The City of Never is derived from The Book of Wonder written by Lord Dunsany, published in 1912. It features a civilization amassed on top of a large, dark cave. The illustration’s most notable features are the glowing eyes darting angrily toward a man riding on a winged creature within the dark caves centred within the scene and the bottom corners that seemingly glare at a man riding a winged creature. Priscilla Long notes that Sime was “profoundly influenced by his traumatic years of child labour in a Yorkshire colliery” (789). This is evident within the illustration as the threat of the dark cave plays a crucial role in unnerving its audience with the anxiety of the unknown that lurk within it.
Works Cited
Sime, Sidney. 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
Long, Priscilla. Review of Caverns of Night: Coal Mines in Art, Literature, and Film. Technology and Culture, vol. 42 no. 4, 2001, p. 789-790. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.2001.0173.