An Ape with a Cigar IN YOUR FACE

Coming next year from Vintage Classics UK is the somewhat new concept of 3D book cover art*. They're publishing a set of five science-fiction classics, each of which will come with a pair of red/green 3D glasses in order to appreciate the covers. Here are the covers... (click on the first three for much bigger versions, especially if you already own a pair of old anaglyph glasses)

These aren't bad at all, though the Lovecraft misses the opportunity to do something which actually hurts the eyes, which would have been appropriate.

(UPDATE: And as Óscar Palmer notes in the comments, the two Vernes are the work of Jim Tierney, who also did these gorgeous Verne covers as part of his student work. Tierney is now working for Penguin in the US, a well-deserved role.)

And here's another of the Vintage Classics D. H. Lawrences with a Carla van de Puttelaar cover photo (see here for the others).

* Relatively new for non-lascivious purposes, in any case. The only other 3D books that I've seen in bookshops are along these lines...

And for more unlikely ape action, look here.

Carla van de Puttelaar on David Herbert Richards Lawrence

When Vintage Classics relaunched itself (for the seond time in what seemed just a few months) in 2007, it was partly with the express purpose of challenging Penguin Classics. What this has mostly meant is that we've got yet another edition of a Jane Austen or a Charles Dickens book that's already available in 3,298,447 editions already. This is a bit of a shame, as Vintage, as part of the vast Random House empire, has access to the copyrights a vast array of amazing literature--the hundreds of now out-of-print books from the Harvill Leopard library alone would be welcome additions to the list.

However, with some of the Vintage Classics which are already available from other publishers, they have done some nice cover work. The upcoming D. H. Lawrences, for example, will make use of the beautiful photographs of Dutch artist Carla van de Puttelaar, a world of pale skin, faint blemishes, blues and blacks.

Van de Puttelaar's work has been collected in a couple of books...

..and used in the past on a number of novels.