Wednesday, 29 October 2008

'Amity' a-mundo


Bernard Fleetwood-Walker's 'Amity', an eye-catching painting from 1933 with a certain Midwich Cuckoos air about it, is the latest addition to the massed ranks of one image doing service on multiple book covers.



Here it is on the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition of Colette's Ripening Seed, and here it is again on the new Persephone Classics edition of Monica Dickens' Mariana.

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10 comments:

  1. Levi Stahl29 October 2008 at 18:09

    We're thinking along the same lines. My first thought was of the Midwich Cuckoos.

    I didn't realize that Persephone had begun featuring images on their covers. All the ones I have are that oddly rich grey color.

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  2. JRSM29 October 2008 at 19:27

    I should have said, actually, that Persephone are continuing those grey covers, but they're also releasing variant editions of a few of their most popular books with illustrated covers.

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  3. Lucy Fishwife30 October 2008 at 05:49

    I'm so glad you noticed the Colette one - I actually read that exact edition a few months ago! On an unrelated topic, I was searching despearately the other day for an original version of James Thurber's "13 Clocks", as the Ronald Searle illustrations aren't the ones I grew up with, and when I googled it, where did it lead me but to your page? Thank you thank you. Ordered the new HB reissue off amazon.com forthwith, as sadly the resources in my bookshop don't allow for US importing... Thanks again! X

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  4. Lucy Fishwife30 October 2008 at 05:50

    PS "desperately", obviously, not "despearately".

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  5. JRSM30 October 2008 at 14:50

    It (the Colette) is a great book--I'm a big fan of hers: it's a shame so much of her stuff has dropped out of print over the last few years. And yay for the '13 Clocks'! Another wonderful book. Pleased to be of service!

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  6. Ian Koviak1 November 2008 at 23:56

    i'm lost on the Midwich Cuckoos connection. Looks totally different.

    This illustrative style is similar to some of the art that graced the Gabriel Garcia Marquez books penguin was putting out a while ago. You know the ones?

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  7. JRSM2 November 2008 at 14:44

    It's not that it looks like a Midwich Cuckoos cover so much as that the two people look a LOT like the Cuckoos as described in the book: the slightly scary good looks, the piercing eyes, the hair...

    I hadn't noted the Marquez similarity: I'm going to have to hunt those covers down--they all seem to have been replaced over the past year with brightly-coloured photographs.

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  8. Ian Koviak2 November 2008 at 20:11

    ok. yeah. I see what you mean. Yeah, try to see if you can find those old covers. The illustrations were great. I know Buckley did a few and I think Mark Cohen. All for Penguin. It was very similar in style to this. I only have 2 of the books that used the paintings, but I know there were more.

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  9. Anonymous22 January 2009 at 11:38

    I've got the Monica Dickens Persephone with the picture cover. While I admire the books with the endpapers and dover grey covers and/or picture covers I still think I'd rather have a less aesthetically pleasing cover and a cheaper book. £10.99 is way too expensive for a pbk.

    Anyways, I'm enjoying browsing through your archives. Nice blog.

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  10. JRSM22 January 2009 at 14:12

    Thanks, Nicola: I know what you mean--I have several more of their books on my to-get list, but haven't yet scrounged up the cash.

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