The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson in Art

Since William Hope Hodgson's strange novel, The House on the Borderland, first appeared, artists have sought to capture the demented, liminal spirit of the hellish house. Here, it's worth collecting a few of these efforts for comparison. Hodgson's otherworldly house was a product of pure imagination, which earned it praise from weird fiction contemporaries like H.P. Lovecraft.

Depictions of the eponymous house veer toward the decrepit profile given in the novel. Recently, illustrator Richard Corben translated Hodgson's work to the visual medium in his House on the Borderland graphic novel. Corben's house follows the book pretty literally, but also takes the liberty of making the house look exceptionally crooked. Corben's artwork zeroes in on an essential feature of illustrating Hodgson: the house, as a reality spanning nightmare, must reflect its warped realm more than the cliff it seems to occupy.

It's the house and its surroundings, after all, where the supernatural events of the novel unfold. Although visual artists have sought to capture far stranger aspects of Hodgson's story than its house, many images hinge on effectively generating the eeriness and surrealism in the house. The house is ultimately the lever for artistic weirdism that's worthy of the novel, and these are just a few images that come close to that level of justice.

-Grim Blogger