The world of literary tattoos is surprisingly large, yet it remains relatively niche. Sure, there was Shelly Jackson’s SKIN project about five years back, but otherwise it’s fairly infrequent that we hear about the two worlds intersecting. That’s why when Penguin announced Penguin Ink, their re-covering of several classic (or modern classic) novels with cover art from leading tattoo artists (including the now epically badass-looking Bridget Jones’ Diary,) it whet our appetite for more book/tatt intersection. Thanks to online communities like Bookworms With Ink and Contrariwise (as well as good old Flickr), we were able to not just satiate but gorge on skin ink of the bookish variety both good… and bad. We had a few caveats: no Harry Potter, no Twilight, and no Alice In Wonderland. Every single one of those has been done to death. Some of our favorites both highbrow and lowbrow (as well as a few very NSFW) after the cut.
The Highbrow:
David Mitchell’s literary tour-de-force Cloud Atlas translated into a gorgeous piece of body art.
A cute, fitting nod to Beatrix Potter
This visual homage to Oscar Wilde’s Salome has us wanting to see more.
A simple, well-designed nod to Joyce is always in fashion.
One of many The Little Prince tatts we came across, but one of our favorites. Again, simplicity and elegance win out every time.
This C.S. Lewis quote is made all the better by the hanging comma, a comment on where the tattoo ends and the sentence continues. Note to those looking to get literary tattoos: the more of a grammar and punctuation nerd you are, the better. Commas are sexy.
There are many, many Shel Silverstein tattoos out there. We’re fans of this one of his Missing Piece.
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My son-in-law has an excellent tat of Max (from Where the Wild Things Are) on his upper arm.
I’ve been contemplating a white rabbit for a while now!
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wow… those are all terrible.
[...] An Exploration of Literary Tattoos (NSFW*) [...]
[...] exchange of paintings between Obama and Dave. Elsewhere on the site I found this page of literary tattoos, which are rather swell. What I want to say is that if anyone ever wants to write She Stood There [...]
[...] it was with interest that I came across this story, on Flavor Wire, which includes a fair number of literary tattoos, some great and some less great. [...]
On my right forearm, have “erleichda” (a made-up word from Tom Robbins’s Jitterbug Perfume surrounded by jasmine flowers. I dunno if it’s made me lighter (the invented term is an injunction to “lighten up!”) but the reminder helps some days.
Wolfmother wallpaper!
There’s a photo-book of literary tattoos coming out early this October from HarperCollins, and I know this because I co-edited that book, which is called The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide. You’ll pray forgive the commercial, but I thought you might be interested to know. As it happens, our book will include a picture of those very Salome tattoos (though the image we used is just a bit more SFW) and about 150 more besides–Joyce, Whitman, Homer, and yes, several Shel Silverstein as well. There’s not much up on the Amazon page yet, but information should be appearing soon. All best,
http://www.amazon.com/Word-Made-Flesh-Bookworms-Worldwide/dp/0061997404/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280067945&sr=1-3
my name is lollie & i am a national award winning tattoo artist. i have amor vincit omnia {canterbury tales, nun’s necklace} on my left wrist.
When I was going to school to Boston, I met a guy who had the JSTOR logo tattooed on his forearm. I almost fell off my bar stool.
I have invictus on my side(well, the first half, need to get the second in the next few weeks) It’s mirrored, so I can read it :D ….much better then that one there! I can’t even read what line she has
[...] apparently it’s a reference to “her magazine”. It’s also referenced in this article on literary tattoos from Flavorwire (and attributed to BEE). A bing search for “don’t [...]
I am rather flabbergasted that so many of the comments posted here can be praising this documentary for making the mess that were in clear to them. I found this film to be almost completely incoherent, with an enormous range of topics cherrypicked from financial history and economic theory and spun together to make an argument that says what? That humans are irrational actors and have trouble predicting the future? This is not an enlightening thesis and it does not flow logically from the points (barely points) raised by each of the subsections of the program.
I named my daughter “Annabel Lee”, after the famous poem by Edgar Allen Poe. I had thought long and hard about getting a specific line from the poem tattooed, but I can’t for the life of me decide if I want to keep it simple or make it much more elaborate.
“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;”
I plucked this one out because of the dreams I had about my daughter while still being pregnant with her, without knowing her sex yet, believe it or not.
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