"I knew immediately that this was a match made in heaven for a book set in Hell," says Beehive Books publisher Josh O'Neill, who reached out to Hollington in early 2021 about collaborating on one of his imprint's elaborate illuminated editions. "Sophy's work, like Dante's poem, is so strange and visionary and mind-bending ... I knew she could swim through Dante's strange Hell without indulging in any of the cliches of the genre, and would bring us something utterly new, like the poem did six centuries ago."
For the uninitiated, Alighieri's narrative poem, the first installment of The Divine Comedy, takes the reader on a journey into the nine rings of hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. While Alighieri's vivid writing imbues Hell with vibrant life, artists have long taken their own crack at complementing it-the most well-known being the 19th century work of William Blake and Gustave Doré. Rather than eschew her predecessors wholesale, Hollington used their work as reference points for structure, pace, and focus.
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