For this final week of Edward Gorey covers, I’ve pulled together all the stragglers I could find, covers he did that are later or not for Doubleday Anchor. The Rilke cover to the right is really striking, with a completely flat visual plain and very limited lines, the cover captures Rilke’s likeness, down to the intense, searching eyes. While many of Gorey’s covers are conceptually efficient or sparse, this is the only one that I’ve found that is graphically so. He’s abandoned all the tiny, scratchy lines and intense detail for a totally graphic treatment. It really works, and makes me wonder what other work like this he has floating out in the world, collecting dust on the shelves of used bookshops.
Gorey did some work for Vintage Press, particularly on their “Vintage Russian Library” series. I’ve only found the two below, but it is possible he was involved with other books in the set. While the handwritten titling really grabs me, I find the illustrations less compelling that the better Anchor book covers.
Below is a Gorey illustrated edition of the T.S. Elliot kids book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. This is much more classic looking Gorey, with the animals and the playfulness, and it doesn’t really do much for me, except that I do like the repetition—but slight differences—on the back cover.
This last cover is simply a reprint of an earlier edition of the same book. Last week we say this in its 1956 Anchor edition, here is a 1980s printing from Columbia University Press. It is a beautiful landscape, so it really benefits from the increased size of this trade paperback edition (not that you can tell on screen here, where it looks almost identical).
The below bibliography is only for the books that have been in the last three weeks of blog posts, it is in no way a complete list of book covers designed by Edward Gorey!
Edward Gorey covers for Doubleday Anchor:
Alain-Fournier, The Wanderer (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1953). A14. Cover design by Edward Gorey, typography by Joseph Ascherl.
Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1959). A186. Cover by Eugene Berman, typography by Edward Gorey.
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1953). A8. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Joseph Conrad, Victory (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1957). A106. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Charles M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1955). A50. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Angel Flores, ed., An Anthology of French Poetry from Nerval to Valery in English Translation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1958). A134. Cover by Philippe Julian, typography by Edward Gorey.
Henry Green, Loving (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1953). A18. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Henry James, What Maisie Knew (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1954). A43. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Franz Kafka, Amerika (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1956). A49. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/The Sickness Unto Death (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1954). A30. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
S. Kierkegaard, Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1960). A210. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Mihail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1958). A133. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
W.H. Lewis, The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1957). A122. Cover design by Philippe Jullian, typography by Edward Gorey.
Herman Melville, Redburn, His First Voyage (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1957). A118. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Perry Miller, ed., The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1956). A80. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Thomas Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry: The ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1974). A1004. Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Leon Trotsky, The Russian Revolution (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1959). A170. Cover typography by Edward Gorey.
Edmund Wilson, A Literary Chronicle: 1920-1950 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1956). A-85. Cover and typography by Edward Gorey.
Non-Anchor Books titles:
N.G. Chernyshevsky, What is To Be Done? (New York: Vintage, 1961). Cover design by Edward Gorey.
T.S. Elliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (New york: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1982). Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Perry Miller, ed., The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry (New York: Morningside/Columbia University Press, 1982). Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Alexander Pushkin, The Captain’s Daughter and other stories (New York: Vintage, 1957). Cover design by Edward Gorey.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (New York: Capricorn, 1958). Cover design by Edward Gorey.
