Infernal

Penguin seems to be going Dante crazy at the moment. Above is a new cover design for a new Penguin Classics UK edition of Inferno. They don't seem to have matching versions for Purgatorio and Paradiso, but then, as with Proust, most people don't make it past volume one, so perhaps they know their market. To be fair, Inferno is the most entertaining of the three: Dante is at his best consigning everyone who ever pissed him off to the flames, and less fun when he's just going on about Beatrice.

The above edition joins the recent hardback version, with a Coralie Bickford-Smith jacket:

Penguin Classics US, meanwhile, have just released a Graphic Classics edition of the full Divine Comedy, with cover artwork by Eric Drooker. I only know Drooker's work from his excellent wordless graphic novel, Flood. His other work includes a visual adaption of Ginsberg's Howl!, but as I pretty much loathe Ginsberg and his poetry, I haven't investigated that one.

Click to see it in all its glory

To see some of Flood, visit Drooker's site here.

Of course, none of these have quite the same effect as this edition of Inferno from Del Rey. I can't think of anyone who will buy this book because of its cover or videogame association who won't be bitterly disappointed, and anyone who wants the book for its literary value is not going to go with this edition. It's a perfect example of a misconceived book.

I don't remember scenes like this from the book:

21 Penguins to Start the Year Off Properly

Let's kick of 2012 with an elegant set of Penguins, shall we? These are the resuscitation of the 'Penguin English Library' series, which will presumably run alongside the Penguin Classics, penguin Popular Classics, Penguin Red Classics, Penguin Pocket Classics and various other ranges, meaning that the one publisher releases 17,235 different versions of some books. (I kid, though only slightly--Penguin Australia has at least 7 different version of Pride and Prejudice in print, for example.)

Anyway, here are the 21 covers from the series which I have found so far, coming out from April this year. They follow the lovely designs Coralie Bickford-Smith made for the Penguin Hardback Classics (see here, for example), and I would not be surprised if they were her work as well. Redundant though the books themselves may be, they've been given a charming and thoughtful series look which allows for a lot of individual variation for each title.

Chatterley Bonanza

D. H. Lawrence and his Lady Chatterley's Lover has cropped up quite a bit round here recently. I thought it might be entertaining to look at some of the current and past covers for this famous book (often famous for the wrong reasons). The two opening images here are lithograhs (by a Peter Schem?) from a 1956 French edition.

Let's start with the mind-addling variety of editions currently in print from Penguin...

The 50th anniversary edition from last year

The standard Penguin Classics edition, with art by Aaron Robinson (see here)

The current Penguin Essentials edition with art by Lucy McLauchlan (see here)

The Penguin Graphic Classics edition, with art from Chester Brown (click for much bigger version)

The Penguin Hardback Classics edition, designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith (interviewed here)

The Popular Penguins edition

Six different versions of one book in print from the one publisher? Not weird at all.

Then there are Penguin's various past editions, some of which are...

Popular Classics edition, 1990s

Various Penguin 20th Century Classics editions, late 1980s to mid-1990s

Penguin US, 1948

Film tie-in

Penguin, 1960

Penguin, 1978, photo by fashion/erotica photographer Harri Peccinotti (thanks, Gould!)

Penguin, 1980

Penguin Designer Classic by Paul Smith, 2006

Essential Penguin, 1990s

Penguin Modern Classic, early 2000s

Penguin US, 1946

Then there's the new edition from Vintage Classics, with a photo by Carla van de Puttelaar (see here for more)...

 

Some of you may remember a couple of awful ebook covers for other Lawrence novels. You'll be thrilled to know that the same company now has a Lady Chatterley edition to match, with Lady C and Mellors rather unexpectedly getting it on in an empty theatre.

This is not the only shitty ebook version out there. For example...

Mellors's smooth moods were her only distraction from the rising damp from Alpha Centauri

Wiped, but left toilet paper between buttocks

But let's get back to physical books from the past, both in English and not...

Ace, 1958: the erotic possibilities of a well-trimmed lawn

Tor, Argentina, 1939

Avon, 1950: big, big hair

Avon, 1956 (with bonus Lawrence): smaller hair makes for a useful hand-rest

Berkley, 1958: lipstick

Colombian edition, 1981: remember the era when every photo had this sort of soft-focus effect? Wasn't it awful?

Gallimard edition, French, 1963

French edition, 1985

Gallimard edition, French, 1960s: more scary hair

French edition, 1969

French edition, 1972: The Joy of Sex and Strategically Placed Vegetation

German edition, 1973

US edition, Grove, 1982

Civilização Brasileira edition, Brazil, designed by the amazing Eugênio Hirsch

Signet, 1950

Signet, 1957

Signet, 1959

Signet, 1959

Signet 1962: now it's a classic, we can show breasts

Signet, 2000s

Travellers Pocket Edition, Canada, 1949: the subtle version

Travellers Pocket Edition, Canada, 1949: the saucy version

Polish edition, 1991: hair big enough to contain a house

Spanish edition, 1978

And finally, a little further afield, the Hunt Emerson comic adaption...

..with the 'not for sale to wives and servants' line being a reference to one of the sillier utterances of Mervyn Griffith-Jones, prosecutor in the 1960 obscenity trial against Penguin Books for publishing the full version of Lady Chatterley's Lover, a trial summarised in this book with a cunning cover by David Pearson.