Suddenly Wells Everywhere

In 1946, having recently published the short but aptly-titled Mind at the End of Its Tether, H. G. Wells died. And thus 2017, which is 70 years later, sees him drop out of copyright in much of the world. And lo, there suddenly shall come forth a torrent of Wells.

Vintage Classics UK is one of the first to have a go, with these eye-warping 3D covers. Vintage Classics used to compete with Penguin Classics, who have the paperback rights to Wells while copyright lasts. Now Vintage is wned by the same people, Penguin Random House, so they will be going into competition with themselves, but I'm sure this makes sense to an accountant somewhere.

Oxford World's Classics are being rather more sober about things (I do like the Moreau cover, but the others are a bit bland).

Alma are adding him to their Evergreens catalogue...

..while Gollancz/Weinfeld & Nicolson, who currently only have hardback rights to Wells, are shuffling a whole lot into paperback (more on these here):

 

Collins Classics are doing their usual quickie covers...

..and the Macmillan Collector's Library are having a go too:

Vintage US is bringing out a couple...

..and finally we have Wordworth Classics, if you want ugly but cheap editions.

The five most popular choices in all this lot are, of course, five of Wells's best-known books, and for a good reason. Each of them effectively created a branch of science-fiction that would have countless imitators and followers over the next century-and-more (The War of the Worlds: alien invasion, The Time Machine: time travel, The First Men in the Moon: space exploration, The Island of Doctor Moreau: biological/genetic engineering, The Invisible Man: superpowers), but it's nice to see a few of the neglected social novels getting some attention too. In this respect, Peter Owen is standing out from the crowd: they're republishing only one Wells, and it's completely SF-free.

Not Covers, Just Mockery

An amusing typo I came across while seeing what is coming out from Oneworld next year. Somebody's not even smart enough to work in data entry at Amazon.

The Rooks Have Come Back, Again

Three recent editions of great books by great Russian writers; one cover image.





The painting is the atmospheric 'The Rooks Have Come Back' (sometimes called 'The Flight of the Crows') by Alexei Kondratyevich Savrasov. (Click for a much bigger version.)



You can see that by tweaking the colour values towards the yellow and away from the blue, the Oxford Chekhov book gets a much more sunny feel: you wouldn't know at first glance that there was snow on the ground.

Savrasov (1830-1897) lived the stereotype of the Russian artist's life: commercial family background, early promise, European travel, success and fame, alcoholism, failure, penury, lonely death, only one mourner at the funeral. A collection of his moody, human-free landscapes is online here.

As for the three books: Ivan Bunin is somewhat neglected these days, but his short stories and novellas are wonderful (though best not read en masse, as they all tend to end in the same way); Turgenev is fantastic at bringing together a small community of disparate characters, often related in various complicated ways, and setting them loose on one another; and Chekhov is still THE short story writer to beat. You can't go wrong with any of them.

Near Enough

I quote that fount of uncontested truth, Wikipedia, when I say "the Kalahari Bushmen, San, Sho, Basarwa, Kung, or Khwe are indigenous people of southern Africa that spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola."

You'll notice that list of countries does not include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which used to be the Belgian Congo, the setting for Joseph Conrad's famous Heart of Darkness.

So it's odd that two different publishers (Hesperus and Oneworld) should decide to use Kalahari Bushmen on their Heart of Darkness covers.




These are the original photos, both of men in traditional head-dresses, and both by Art Wolfe, whose website is chock-full of amazing photographs.




And here they are with the covers, just for the hell of it.




It's a bit of a shame that two publishers who do a lot to bring much great world literature into English seem to have plumped for an any-old-African-will-do approach for their covers.

5 Books I Recently Bought Just Because of Their Covers

Joe Meno, The Boy Detective Fails: First learned of this writer here. How could you not want to know what happens in this book?


Heather McRobie, Psalm 119: Sunbathing tourist rudely disturbed by exploding city. I'm sold.


Lionel Davidson, The Night of Wenceslas: Saw the cover (click for bigger version) in a second-hand book shop. Thought, 'That's got to be a Romek Marber!'. It was. Saw the author, one of whose other books I loved years ago. Had to have.

Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl: I like owls. (As an aside, though, I notice that Oneworld Classics' original claim that each of their books would have an extensive section of photos, background info, etc, seems to have gone by the wayside, the nifty French flaps of their covers have disappeared, and the cover stock now looks and feels more like something on a POD book. Still, they publish some great stuff.)


Gwyn Griffin, Sons of God: Have never heard of this chap, but how about that Ralph Steadman cover (click for bigger version)? And the book is about a seedy police superintendent in a soon-to-be-independent British colony in Africa who gets mixed up in unwise political, romantic and social entanglements. Like George Orwell mixed with Graham Greene, it says here. That's my cup of tea.