Friday, October 17, 2008

Display case 2 (Kertész, Abbott, Smith)



  Three cover illustrations and the photographs from which they are derived:

  For the 1964 paperback edition of Colette's novel, The Shackle, illustrator Jacqueline Schuman has produced a line drawing based on André Kertész's 1915 photograph Lovers, Budapest. Schuman (who has illustrated scores of book covers, including Violette Leduc's in the next display case) has here adopted a drawing style somewhat reminiscent of Jean Cocteau, a friend and contemporary of Colette.


Title: The Shackle

Author: Colette

Publisher: Noonday (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 1976

Designer / Illustrator: Jacqueline Schuman



  The Arrow softcover of The Big Kiss-Off of 1944 cribs storefront, barber pole and sign from Berenice Abbott's Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery, Manhattan, October 24, 1935. The two figures in the cover artwork have been imported from elsewhere.


Title: The Big Kiss-Off Of 1944

Author: Andrew Bergman

Publisher: Arrow Books 1976

Designer / Illustrator: Not listed



  Finally, another edition of Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier (see previous display case for the first copy). The source for this edition's cover artwork is documentary photographer W. Eugene Smith's 1950 image, Three Generations of Welsh Miners. In the drawing, however, one generation has been removed, and the row houses in the background have been replaced by factory smokestacks.


Title: The Road To Wigan Pier

Author: George Orwell

Publisher: Harvest (Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, Inc.)

Designer / Illustrator: Hal Siegal

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