Evocative Covers

This classic bit of commercial surrealism grabbed me when I was a kid and has stayed with me ever since. Alexander King was a bit before my time -I've only seen pieces of the Jack Parr Show in retrospectives- so May This House Be Safe From Tigers is a treasured cultural fossil. The cover is by one S. Lazarus; if he ever did any other work in this vein, I'd certainly like to see it!

Currently my favorite cover is Anime: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation by Susan J. Napier.

Actually Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Anime. More orange.

My personal favorite is the first edition hardback of Alanna: the First Adventure - Not only have I always loved the artwork, it evokes all kinds of memories about when I purchased the book and an important time in my relationship with books. Tons of sentimental attachement to it.

Last week I visited a very old friend for the first time in many years and felt overwhelmingly jealous of her enormous collection of vintage Mackintosh covers/illustrated books. I mean enormous - hundreds of books - All with those amazing, embossed, gilded covers - All by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I feel a new collection/obsession coming on...

jimi Hendrix's cover of Dylan's "All along thr Watchtower"

Just found this, sorry... ;-)


(Link provided by the mask artist Jennifer Harrison).

sunny, that is...AWESOME!!!!

*grin*

Tim: That's MY favorite cover, too!

Sunny: "grin" - hell; I wet my pants laughing (WMPL?)!

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

Time's 1960 review of "May This House Be Safe From Tigers."

http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,871600,00.html

Looking through my own library, I'm struck by how many covers I don't like (e.g. Pale Fire, great book, awful cover). But my favorites are: Black Hole, Blood Music (the first user-provided cover), The Wolves in The Walls, Sarah Canary (the user-provided cover), Ice Haven, Women, Mother, Come Home, Persepolis. And Dali, because you can't go wrong with a lobster phone.

I likewise prefer the "canonical" cover for Delta of Venus by Anais Nin; the mass market paperback is too subtle, and the one with the two entwined lesbians (which includes Little Birds) is too explicit. Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise has a considerable range too.

I like the new Penguin Classics cover for Wilkie Collins's Armadale...

http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/static/covers/all/8/1/9780140434118H.jpg

The painting on the cover is a detail from "The Eve of St. Agnes" by John Everett Millais.

Gorgeous.

I love all the covers for the old Angela Thirkell's books, and also the cover for Possession by A.S.Byatt, which I believe is a painting by Sir Edward Burne Jones (who, incidentally, was Angela Thirkell's grandfather!)

They don't make 'em like this anymore unless they're deliberately being retro: The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly.

I wish they were more retro......

I really admire the retro deco look that a lot of jacket designers are using now, as in Susan Kandel's Not a Girl Detective. And the retro pulp look featured on the cover of Paul Malmont's Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is also very striking and increasingly popular.

I love the old Pan covers on old murder mysteries. They're also fun and cheap to collect from 2ndhand bookstores. See Pan Covers for some of my favourite 1940s & 50s covers.

ryn_books, those covers are awesome!!

Check out Paula Wirth's photos on Flickr. She has whole series on vintage advertising, pulp paperbacks and LPs and the like. Great stuff!

ryn_books, -

The Pan covers are great.

For similar style artwork, there are some sites you might not know about - there is one for Hank Janson (aka Richard Williams aka Stephen Frances), run by his piographer Steve Holland which has some great cover artwork and a `site-within-a-site` for cover artist Heade aka R C Webb, who was responsible for some of the Pan covers. There is Blakiana - cover artwork from Webb and others featured in this wide-ranging site edicated to fictional detective Sexton Blake. Also a site for writer Jack Trevor Story run by super-fan Guy Lawler - again more art from Heade/Webb and others.

If you like Pan art-work, you`ll love these.

Thanks everyone. I didn't know about the other reference sites and there's some lovely covers there. I plan to add more Pan covers, plus do my Fontana and Four Square covers by Xmas.

This website~ Pan Books Gallery 1947-1966 is also a great referenc for these vintage covers.

In the middle of housemoving, so all my books are in boxes right now... (sigh)

I'm a sucker for a pretty girl. Retro, I know...

http://davidlavery.net/Tiptree/

A great cover for a classic is on the new illustrated version of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - it is illustrated by Dame Darcy.

The covers for the new translations of Proust (in hardback) are beautiful. Subtle, nostalgic, and romantic.

I'd like to see the Proust covers. Could you post a link to some or tell us the publisher?

This concerns a different kind of cover entirely, but I thought that those of us interested in cover art - and books - might like to have a look at this week's New Yorker cover, if this magazine is available to you. It features towers of books, and a solitary reader perched atop one of them. (I think it's called "Bookopolis") Made me think of LT right away!
Maggie