"This day's experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside." –Alice Munro, "What is Remembered"
So many covers to scan… so little time…
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ABOVE: Arthur C. Clarke, Dolphin Island (NY: Berkley, 1971), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Dean R. Koontz, Nightmare Journey (NY: Berkley, 1975), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
ABOVE: Richard Rohmer, Separation (NY: Bantam-Seal, 1977), with cover art by Paul Lehr.
Illustrator Darrell K. Sweet (1934-2011) was a reliable image maker who, it seems to me, tended to strive for a kind of old-fashioned naturalism in his fantasy and science fiction paintings but whose finished work often appeared slightly (and sometimes, especially in his later years, more than slightly) cobbled together and stiff. Once in a while, however — the period from late 1970s to the early 1980s was definitely the sweet spot — the artist managed to break through to a more expressive (and cohesive) version of his basic style. Sweet’s 1978 covers for Stephen R. Donaldson’s first “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever” trilogy, for instance, were among the finest of his career, and compare favourably with the work of his heroes from the so-called “Golden Age of Illustration.” And look here! I’ve just scanned them — from the 1983 reprints I recently acquired to replace my disintegrating 1978 originals — for you to admire:
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ABOVE: Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul’s Bane (NY: Ballantine, 1983), with cover art by Darrell K. Sweet.
ABOVE: Stephen R. Donaldson, The Illearth War (NY: Ballantine, 1983), with cover art by Darrell K. Sweet.
ABOVE: Stephen R. Donaldson, The Power that Preserves (NY: Ballantine, 1983), with cover art by Darrell K. Sweet.
Classic covers for a classic trilogy! What more can one ask for?
I only have two battered volumes of the Signet Classic Shakespeare Series of paperbacks with cover art in pen and ink and wash by Milton Glaser in my book collection, but they are definitely worth scanning for display here, so… voilà!
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ABOVE: William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, edited by Robert Langbaum (NY: Signet, c.1963), with cover art by Milton Glaser.
ABOVE: William Shakespeare, The Tempest, edited by Wolfgang Clemen (NY: Signet, c.1964), with cover art by Milton Glaser.
BONUS CONNECTION:
If Glaser’s drawing for the cover of The Tempest looks vaguely familiar to you, it might be because you’ve seen Glaser’s famous psychedelic poster of Bob Dylan, created for the release of Dylan’s 1967 “Greatest Hits” album…
— VIA —
I’ve posted scans of two of the following covers before, so in order to add value, I’ve rescanned one of the repeats and scanned the other from a duplicate copy that I have in my collection:
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ABOVE: Sax Rohmer, Brood of the Witch-Queen (NY: Pyramid Books, 1966), with cover art by J. Lombardero.
ABOVE: Sax Rohmer, The Golden Scorpion (NY: Pyramid Books, 1966), with cover art by J. Lombardero.
ABOVE: Sax Rohmer, The Dream Detective (NY: Pyramid Books, 1966), with cover art by J. Lombardero.
ABOVE: Sax Rohmer, The Yellow Claw (NY: Pyramid Books, 1966), with cover art by J. Lombardero.
ABOVE: Sax Rohmer, The Green Eyes of Bast (NY: Pyramid Books, 1971), with cover art by J. Lombardero.
I’m certainly no expert on the publication history of the novels of Sax Rohmer, but it seems unlikely to me that they have ever been as attractively and appropriately packaged as they were when Pyramid was the publisher and Joe Lombardero was the cover artist. Sad to say, but sans Lombardero, Pyramid embraced a far more pedestrian design for their Sax Rohmer books (not that the actual readers of the books probably cared one way or the other). Here, for instance, is Pyramid’s edition of Emperor Fu Manchu, with art by Len Goldberg, that was published in the same year, 1966, as four of the five paperbacks posted above with art by Lombardero:
ABOVE: Sax Rohmer, Emperor Fu Manchu (NY: Pyramid Books, 1966), with cover art by Len Goldberg.
Oddly enough, around the same time, Sax Rohmer and Pyramid Books got a bit of “free” publicity from International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, New York:
ABOVE: Advertisement for International Telephone and Telegraph, New York, published in National Geographic, vol. 132, no. 5 (November 1967).
Unfortunately, librarians have often used exactly the same argument that the folks at ITT deploy in that advertisement to defend Corpsman C. Sanders’ preference for Fu Manchu over Hamlet to defend the inclusion of comics in library collections…
But anyway, no publicity is bad publicity, right?
None of the following paperbacks by Dashiell Hammett includes a credit for the cover artist, but the languorous signature of H. Lawrence Hoffman is clearly visible in the lower left-hand corner of the “Pocket Book Editions” of Red Harvest and in the lower-middle of The Thin Man. Several websites give Gerald Gregg the nod for the cover of Dead Yellow Women, so let’s just say that one is by that guy (unless and until someone proves otherwise). And last but not least, the cover art for The Glass Key is signed “MANSU” in the lower right, a solid clue that ought to lead to an attribution, except that I have no idea who Mansu is, and neither, if Google is to be believed, does anyone else. But maybe you can help…?
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ABOVE: Dashiell Hammett, The Glass Key (NY: Pocket Books, 1943), with cover art signed “Mansu.”
ABOVE: Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest (NY: Pocket Books, 1943), with cover art by H. Lawrence Hoffman.
ABOVE: Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man (NY: Pocket Books, 1944), with cover art by H. Lawrence Hoffman (attrib.).
ABOVE: Dashiell Hammett, Dead Yellow Women (NY: Pocket Books, c1947), with cover art by Gerald Gregg (attrib.).
UPDATE (19 July 2014):
Turns out, the cover art for The Glass Key is not signed “MANSU.” Rather, the signature is “MANSO,” which is the surname of Leo Manso (1914-1993), who later made a name for himself as an abstract painter and collagist.
My books. My scans. You’re welcome.
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ABOVE: Karl Edward Wagner, Dark Crusade (NY: Warner Books, 1983), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Michael Moorcock, The Silver Warriors (NY: Dell, 1973), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Richard A. Lupoff, Into the Aether (NY: Dell, 1974), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Moon Men (NY: Ace, 1978), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Karl Edward Wagner, Bloodstone (NY: Warner Books, 1983), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
ABOVE: Robert E. Howard, Conan the Warrior (NY: Ace, n.d.), with cover art by Frank Frazetta.
Scanned by me, as usual:
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ABOVE: Edmund Cooper, The Cloud Walker (NY: Ballantine, 1973), with wraparound cover art by John Berkey.
ABOVE: Edmund Cooper, The Cloud Walker (NY: Ballantine, 1973), with wraparound cover art by John Berkey.
ABOVE: Stephen Goldin, And Not Make Dreams Your Master (NY: Fawcett, 1981), with cover art by John Berkey.
The cover is uncredited, but the moment I pulled Larksong at Dawn out of the stacks of old paperbacks at a local church sale, I knew by the signature that the illustrator was Fernando Fernández, whose “Circles Trilogy” was featured here at RCN back in 2010. Fernández had died earlier that same year, and his passing was noted, and his career celebrated, in an obituary published on the Guardian website right here.
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ABOVE: Agnes Russell, Larksong at Dawn (NY: Zebra Books, 1978), with cover art by Fernando Fernandez.
RELATED LINK:
Look Here, Read: “The Circles Trilogy” by Fernando Fernandez
One of the following covers with art by Jeffrey Jones is pretty badly scuffed. Can you guess which one it is?
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ABOVE: Stanley G. Wienbaum, The New Adam(NY: Avon, 1969), with cover art by Jeffrey Jones.
ABOVE: Robert E. Howard, The Hand of Kane(NY: Centaur Press, 1970), with cover art by Jeffrey Jones.
If I ever come across a better copy of The New Adam, I’ll probably buy it. I only purchased the battered copy that you see above at a local church sale because I couldn’t, at that moment, remember having seen one before, ever.
As for my copy of The Hand of Kane, I have to say, it’s in much better condition than the scan makes it look.
And so it goes…
Although American commercial artist Ralph McQuarrie (13 June 1929 – 03 March 2012) was perhaps best known for his work as a conceptual designer for movies and television, including the original Star Wars trilogy (1977-1983), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the original Battlestar Galactica TV series (1978), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Cocoon (1985), he was also active, especially in the 1980s, as a cover illustrator for non-movie-related SF paperbacks. Here’s an especially effective example of McQuarrie’s work in that vein, scanned by me from my very own copy of Eric Frank Russell’s Sinister Barrier:
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ABOVE: Eric Frank Russell, Sinister Barrier (NY: Ballantine, 1986), with cover art by Ralph McQuarrie.
Ragged Claws Network 