Lesbian Flowers

Vintage Classics has an edition of Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle coming out soon--one of the first lesbian novels that was frequently funny and joyful, rather than a Radclyffe Hall-style doomfest--and while the cover image is in itself rather beautiful (a photo by Mark Vessey), as a choice of image it feels stale: blossoming flower as a stand-in for blossoming female sexuality is an old, old trope.

This is one of those occasions in which the Vintage Classics author formula of 'VINTAGE [SURNAME]' doesn't work: 'Vintage Brown' sounds like the description of a wallpaper you'd rip down as fast as possible upon buying a house last redecorated in 1978.

It does, however, reference the various, rather dull, US covers that many of the books original readers would recognise (image stolen from here):

Much better, to my mind, is this old Penguin Essentials cover from 2001:

The title and author were listed on a removable sticker used in most bookshops to cover the more prominent nipples

Of course, if it's explicitness you're after, you could always try this Italian edition...