When I was a child I was obsessed with monsters, an obsession fuelled by avid watching of Doctor Who and various child-friendly versions of the Greek myths. My Bible at the time was the Usborne Book of Monsters. And then, when I was about 12 or so, a great-uncle gave me a copy of Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings, with Peter Goodfellow's Bosch-y cover painting. It blew my tiny mind, because it wasn't just an encyclopaedia of monsters, but was funny and clever and inventive at the same time--a collection of stories disguised as a reference book. It got me hooked on Borges well before I could understand more than a fraction of what he wrote about.
Cut to last week, when I got copies of two collections of Borges' poetry: Poems of the Night and The Sonnets. They're beautiful collections, made even more so by the covers designed by Ben Wiseman.
Three collections of Borges' essays are also due soon from Penguin, with more Wiseman covers.
Wiseman has produced a number of other great covers for a variety of publishers. Here are some of my favourites, starting with three elegant Chekhovs.
