The Horse’s Mouth

The Horse’s Mouth is a 1944 novel by Anglo-Irish writer Joyce Cary, the third in his First Trilogy, whose first two books are Herself Surprised and To Be A Pilgrim.

The Horse’s Mouth, the third and most celebrated volume of Joyce Cary’s First Trilogy, is perhaps the finest novel ever written about an artist. Its painter hero, the charming and larcenous Gulley Jimson, has an insatiable genius for creation and a no less remarkable appetite for destruction. Is he a great artist? A has-been? Or an exhausted, drunken ne’er-do-well? He is without doubt a visionary, and as he criss-crosses London in search of money and inspiration the world as seen though his eyes appears with a newly outrageous and terrible beauty.