Madman's Drum

Authors

Lynd Ward

Files

Description

Lynd Ward (1905–1985) was born in Chicago and studied at Columbia Teachers College in New York City and at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking in Leipzig, Germany. He began working as a book illustrator in 1927, and in 1929 published this first “wordless novel,” Gods’ Man. He eventually published five more such works, as well as illustrations for more than 100 other books, plus drawings, lithographs, watercolors, and children’s stories.

Madman’s Drum is his second wordless novel. It tells a dark story about a slaver who murders an African and steals his drum, which seems to carry a curse. The man gets rich, returns home and starts a family, but is later lost at sea. He stops his son from making music and pushes him toward books and science. The son becomes an astronomer, marries and has two daughters, but the drum’s curse destroys his life too. His mother dies in a fall on the stairs. His wife runs off with a fiddle player and dies. One daughter falls in love with a labor organizer who is framed for murder and hanged, and the second daughter is seduced and drawn into prostitution. Finally driven mad by all the tragedies, the astronomer-son becomes a wanderer, accompanied by a mad piper. Ward’s woodcuts are strong and dark, painting a grim picture of the sins of the fathers working out through generations. The original sin was the slave trade—where will its curse end?

Publication Date

2026

Publisher

Zea Books

City

Lincoln, Nebraska

Keywords

wordless novel, graphic novel, woodcuts, slavery

Disciplines

American Literature | American Popular Culture | American Studies | Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies

Comments

Copyright by Macmillan 1930; now in public domain.

Recommended Citation

Ward, Lynd, Madman's Drum. New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1930; reprint Lincoln, Nebraska, Zea Books, 2026.