So, you might wonder, who is Harry Clarke? And what does he have to do with Poe?
Clarke was an artist, but not just any artist. My wife Yvonne and I stumbled across his work on a trip to Ireland, when we wandered into a little church in Dingle, the Chapel of the Sacred Heart at the old convent of the Presentation Sisters.
The sisters were gone, but they had left twelve stained glass windows by Harry Clarke—backlit images bursting with color and life, one of which is shown below. Mesmerized by their beauty, we learned that Clarke, who lived and worked in the early twentieth century, was Ireland’s preeminant stained glass artist and a brilliant book illustrator.

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