Out of Context: “On the outskirts of town, we rented a room – -“
Look Here: RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM, illus. by Robert Stewart Sherriffs (post 1 of 3)
Scottish artist Robert Stewart Sherriffs (13 February 1906 – 26 December 1960) was perhaps best known in his day for the boldly stylized caricatures of contemporary film and theatre stars that he drew for various British periodicals including The Sketch, the BBC’s Radio Times, and Punch; however, beginning in 1930 with his elaborate, decadent line drawings for an edition of Christopher Marlowe’s The Life and Death of Tamurlaine the Great, Sherriffs also produced a substantial — and here in the twenty-first century, for the most part, unjustly forgotten — body of work in the field of book illustration. More than a decade and a half into that second career, in the late 1940s, Sherriffs was commissioned to create twelve illustrations for the Khorasan Edition of Edward FitzGerald’s celebrated English-verse translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I don’t own a first edition of the Khorasan Rubaiyat, which was published in 1947, but in the 1967 reprint edition of the book, the publisher, Collins, informs readers that Sherriffs’ illustrations “are printed in six colours by the offset process on Mellotex offset cartridge” paper, and although one might not understand the jargon, one can’t argue with the result, which is a lovely advertisement for both the illustrator’s and the printer’s art.
Sherriffs’ illustrations were scanned for display here at RCN from a used copy of the Khorasan Rubaiyat that I bought from a local thrift shop; I intend to post the JPEGs in three instalments, of which this is the first…
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NAVIGATION:
Look Here: RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM, illus. by Robert Stewart Sherriffs (post 1 of 3)
Look Here: RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM, illus. by Robert Stewart Sherriffs (post 2 of 3)
Look Here: RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM, illus. by Robert Stewart Sherriffs (post 3 of 3)
BONUS LINKS:
The British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent > Biography: Robert Stewart Sherriffs
National Portrait Gallery > Cartoons by Robert Stewart Sherriffs, 1920s-1930s
BONUS IMAGES:
I didn’t take the following pictures. I simply copied them from an ebay auction to give you an idea of what Sherriffs’ first job as a book illustrator looked like; although the influence of Aubrey Beardsley and Harry Clarke is fairly obvious, it was a terrific debut:
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Happy Valentine’s Day 2013 from RCN!
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There are a LOT of novels in this numbered series of paperbacks by Grace Livinston Hill — the above is number twenty seven! — and to the publisher’s credit, they all have illustrative covers. But sadly, the level of artistry on the covers is, for the most part, neither excellent nor odd enough to make the novels worth collecting. The illustration on the cover of April Gold, however, is not only a cut above ALL of the others that I’ve seen in the series but is quite lovely and, yes, romantic, in and of itself. Which is why I bought it to scan for display online today, 14 February 2013.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Look Here: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, with cover art by Richard Powers
I can’t remember when I bought the sixth printing of the 1974 Berkley Medallion edition of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle for a long time — it was a long time ago — but I do remember being both happy to have the novel to read and unhappy with the cover. Specifically, I’ve always been irritated by the wide red banner that the folks at Berkley Books rudely slapped across the face of Richard Powers’ lovely cover art in order to have a spot to brag about their decision to re-print a much-admired novel and to inform/remind readers that Philip K. Dick’s book had won the Hugo Award for “the best S-F novel of the year” — in 1963! But I am irritated about that no longer, because today I found a copy of the novel with the same cover but without the red banner — Berkley Science Fiction, 1982, tenth printing — in lovely condition, and it only cost me ninety-nine cents and tax to add to my collection.
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Do you see now what was obscured by the red banner? Ironically, it is none other than a little silhouette of “the man” standing ramrod-straight in a void (or hole, or window, or empty eye socket) in Powers’ oddly sculptural, strangely forbidding “high castle.”
Out of Context: “I despise YOU and all you STAND FOR!!.”
Look Here: DEATHBIRD STORIES, with cover art and design by Leo and Diane Dillon
It’s not often that I see paperbacks by Harlan Ellison on the shelves in thrift stores these days — or used-book stores, period — but a couple of months ago, I came across what looks to me to be an unread copy of Deathbird Stories at Value Village — I took it off the shelf just before a local bookseller showed up, looking for underpriced books to stock his shelves, and when I showed him what I had found (I’ve purchased books from his store many times; his prices are reasonable), he told me that I was lucky that I had gotten there before him — and because the book also had the classic cover with both art and design by Leo and Diane Dillon, I bought it. Here’s a scan of the front and back covers along with a rough panorama of the wraparound:
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Interlude: Nina Hagen – Rockpalast (Full Concert)
Tough to play this kind of music in full daylight; much easier to mesmerize the crowd at night, under the lights. But — WAKE UP! — Nina Hagen kicks ass here.
It appears from the listing at this fan site that the concert was recorded for the German TV-show Rockpalast back in 1999.
Nina will celebrate her 58th birthday on 11 March 2013.
Out of Context: “Disturbance is the thing we want most right now.”
— IN CONTEXT —
For the benefit of everyone who has not yet subscribed to RCN’s Twitter feed…
… which is most of you, actually…
Look Here: Two “Michael Shayne Murder Mystery” novels with cover art by Robert Stanley
Actually, only A Taste for Violence includes the credit line “Cover painting by Robert Stanley,” but the stylistic and circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Stanley produced the cover painting for The Corpse Came Calling as well. And yet, the style was common during the period, so maybe someone else deserves the credit:
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The diagrams on the backs of the novels are not something I personally tend to associate with mystery fiction — fantasy fiction, on the other hand, seems to me to be head-over-heels in love with maps and really ought to marry them — but I do wonder if readers at the time ever actually consulted the back covers as they were reading. The disappearance of the maps and floor plans from later editions of the novels may be a sign that they were not a big selling point, that punchy, suggestive copy did more to whet the reader’s appetite for the story within than a label-festooned diagram of an apartment or a neighbourhood ever could.
I’ve got many more “Michael Shayne Murder Mysteries” to scan and post, all with cover art by everybody’s favourite pulp cover artist, Robert McGinnis, but those will have to wait for another day…
Ragged Claws Network 