Ralph Idris Steadman (born 15 May 1936) is a British illustrator best known for his collaboration and friendship with the American writer Hunter S. Thompson. Steadman is renowned for his political and social caricatures, cartoons and picture books, his hyperactive, ultra-expressionistic style since becoming the visual style of Gonzo Journalism.
Books Illustrated
Original Illustrations
- The Curse of Lono by Hunter S. Thompson
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Custom Illustrated Literary Classics
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
- The Mildenhall Treasure by Roald Dahl
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Books Authored and Illustrated
- Still Life with Raspberry: Or, The Bumper Book of Steadman (1969)
- The little red computer (1969)
- No Room to Swing a Cat (1974)
- America (1974)
- The bridge (1975)
- Cherrywood Cannon (1978)
- Emergency Mouse (1978)*
- Two donkeys and a bridge (1983)
- Between the eyes (1984)
- I, Leonardo (1985)
- Paranoids (1986)
- Quasimodo Mouse (1987)*
- Scar Strangled Banger (1988)
- The Big I Am (1988)
- No Room to Swing a Cat (1989)
- Tales of the Weird (1990)
- Teddy! Where Are You? (1994)
- Jones of Colorado (1995)
- The Grapes of Ralph: Wine According to Ralph Steadman (1996)
- The Book of Jones: A Tribute to the Mercurial, Manic, and Utterly Seductive Cat (1997)
- Still Life with Bottle: Whisky According to Ralph Steadman (1997)
- Sigmund Freud (1997)
- Gonzo: The Art (1998)
- Doodaaa: The Balletic Art of Gavin Twinge (2002)
- Untrodden Grapes (2005)
- The Joke's Over: Memories of Hunter S. Thompson (2006)
- The Joke's Over: Bruised Memories: Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, and Me (2006)
- Garibaldi's Biscuits (2009)
- The Ralph Steadman Book of Dogs (2011)
- The Ralph Steadman Book of Cats (2012)
- Extinct Boids (2012)
- Nextinction: Critically Endangered Birds of the World (2015)*
- Little.com (2016)
- Critical Critters (2017)
- Ralph Steadman: A Life in Ink (2020)
Ralph Steadman and his works demonstrate the following tropes:
- Design Student's Orgasm: His primary technique in most of his illustrations is dropping brush-fulls of ink onto paper and deciding what to draw after.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: His relationship with Hunter S. Thompson would switch between two different settings; either Ralph would follow Hunter around on whatever insane thing Hunter was up too as he documented what was happening on paper, or the two would torture each other. It was all in good fun though.
