Meet Henry Darger, the Most Famous of Outsider Artists, Who Died in Obscurity, Leaving Behind Hundreds of Unseen Fantasy Illustrations and a 15,000-Page Novel

"Reclusive hospital custodian Henry Darger spent his early years, after both parents died, in an orphanage and the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children. He spent his almost completely solitary adult life in a second-floor room on the North Side of Chicago, attending Mass daily (often several times a day), before passing away in 1973 in the same old age home in which his father died. He had one friend, left only four photographs of himself, and his few acquaintances were never even sure how to pronounce his last name (it’s a hard “g”). In his last diary entry, New Year’s Day, 1971, Darger wrote, “I had a very poor nothing like Christmas. Never had a good Christmas all my life, nor a good new year, and now… I am very bitter but fortunately not revengeful, though I feel should be how I am.”"

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Meet Henry Darger, the Most Famous of Outsider Artists, Who Died in Obscurity, Leaving Behind Hundreds of Unseen Fantasy Illustrations and a 15,000-Page Novel | Open Culture