(2000 Brown Bear Press pb; pretty much the only way to read this Brooker novel anymore ; cover–(Piano! Piano!), 1934 oil on canvas owned by Brooker family & Art Gallery of ON)
(1979 National Gallery of Canada–an intro to his artwork; cover “Sounds Assembling”, Winnipeg Art Gallery)
(the ultra-rare 1930 hardback Elijah–an Edwin Rudge book, written and illustrated by Brooker)
(sample dazzling illustration inside)
(incredibly rare signature of Brooker; about the only other way to get a signed is to buy one of his paintings)
(Richard) Bertram Brooker (1871-1948) was born in Croydon, England and came to Manitoba at an early age to work on railway construction. He found his truer callings as an author, a journalist, an illlustrator, and as a geometrically abstract painter. Under the pseudonym Huxley Herne, he penned a mystery The Tangled Miracle and then won the 1936 GG Award for fiction with his unusual book Think of the Earth. It is next-to-impossible to find either of these two titles, along with Elijah.