Willy Pogany
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William Andrew ("Willy") Pogany (1882-1955), prolific illustrator of children's and adult books. Born Vilmos Andreas Pogany in Szeged, Hungary in 1882, came to America via Paris and London.
In London, he produced his four masterpieces, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1910), Richard Wagner's Tannhauser (1911), Parsifal (1912) and Lohengrin (1913).
Mr. Pogany's best known works consist of illustrations of classic myths and legends done in the Art Nouveau style.
Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest that in America it was po-GAH-ny. "However, in my native Hungary this name is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable with a slightly shorter o and the gany is as the French -gagne (the y is silent)": PO-gahn. (Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.)
