A Novel Art - Fiction Covers Part Two

Mervyn Peake was a man of many talents. A brilliant draftsman, his illustrations are superbly atmospheric, with masterful use of crosshatching and shading. Peake had a keen eye for the grotesque and the fantastic, something he also brought to bear on his writing. He remains perhaps best known today for his Gormenghast fantasies, novels boasting a dense and acutely detailed imaginative power. The labyrinthine, insular world they depict, dominated by arcane bureaucracies and timeless and unquestioned ritual, is a far cry from the mythic fantasy realms of Tolkien and his ilk; closer in fact to the spirit of Kafka. Peake was also a painter, a poet and an occasional playwright - a profligate creative spirit as a whole. The two covers here represent two halves of his illustrative career, the simplification in style sadly the result of progressive illness. 

Tragedy At Law is a 1942 novel by Cyril Hare, who never actually existed. It's the crimewriting nom de plume of Alfred Clark, who brought his experience as a judge to bear on his deadly fictions. Peake's style is evident in the extensive crosshatching and shading and in the exaggerated profiles of the judge and barrister, with their sharp edged beaks. They resemble the schoolmasters in his sketches for Gormenghast. 

His cover for a pocket edition of George Gissing's classic Victorian novel of gutter journalism and hack writing was produced in 1958. By now, his degenerative illness was increasingly taking hold and his facility and ease with pencil and line gradually deserting him. You can see it in the more jagged and shaky lines in the illustration. His talent still shines through and there is no mistaking who the artist is. But the contrast is notable. He died in a care home in 1968, his decline still shrouded in mystery and ill-informed mytholigising. Subsequent studies, drawing on new medical discoveries, concluded that he had been suffering from a particular form of dementia, DLB (Dementia with Lewy Bodies). His reputation in all his fields of endeavour has grown considerably since his death. 

 

Mr Norris Changes Trains is a 1935 novel by Christopher Isherwood, one of his autobiographically based Berlin stories, here in its Hogarth Press edition (although significantly librarified). John Banting was the cover artist in this instance. He was associated with the Bloomsbury Group in the 1920s, and had a studio in Fitzroy Street, in close vicinity to their territory. His strongly outlined style led to commissions for murals at private houses and for set designs from Sadlers Wells ballet. As this cover might suggest, with its juxtaposed symbols and isolated objects, he had strong surrealist tendencies. Indeed, he was part of the 1936 International Exhibition of Surrealism in London, the first surrealist show in Britain. During the war, he worked alongside Dylan Thomas as part of the Ministry of Information's Strand Films unit. He had a brief relationship with Nancy Cunard, heiress to the shipping line fortune, and shared her leftist and anti-fascist beliefs. He ended his life living in Rye in Sussex, near his friend Edward Burra, and finally on the Sussex coast in Hastings. Banting also produced the cover for Henry Green's 1939 novel Party Going, also published by the Hogarth Press.

The Sleep of Baby Filbertson is a 1958 collection of stories by James Leo Herlihy, probably best known for his novel Midnight Cowboy, which served as the basis of the 1969 film. The cover artist is Tom Keogh. He had a diverse career, both as illustrator and designer. Having moved from New York to Paris with his new wife Theodora, grand-daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, he immediately made an impact with a cover for the 1947 issue of French Vogue. He continued to produce illustrations for Vogue, including sketches for top designers. He also designed sets for Les Ballets des Champs-Elysees, a focal point for modernist choreography and design in the post-war years. His design in this area also extended to a number of Hollywood musicals with a significant dance element - he was costume designer on 1948 Gene Kelly and Judy Garland picture The Pirate, on Anything Goes and Daddy Long Legs with French ballet acquaintance Leslie Caron and Fred Astaire. He also produced covers for his wife Theodora's novels, which have been likened to those of Patricia Highsmith. The couple divorced in the 1960s in the wake of Keogh's affair with Marie-Laure Noialles, a close confidant of Jean Cocteau. After this he lived for a while in Rome before moving back to New York. At which point biographical information becomes rather scant. 

Mr Bunting in the Promised Land is a 1949 comic novel by Robert Green. The cover artist is Thomas Derrick. Given the resemblance to the cartoons of David Low, it's unsurprising to learn that Derrick was a cartoonist of note. He was a Bristolian who trained at the Royal College of Art and went on to design posters for the underground in its 1920s infancy. He became friends with Hillaire Belloc and GK Chesterton, and produced book covers for both writers. He is probably best known for his cartoons in Punch, however, which he drew from 1931 onwards. 

1982 Janine is a novel by writer and artist (or should that be the other way around) Alasdair Gray, published not in 1982 but in 1984. As with all of his books, he designed and illustrated the cover himself. 1982 Janine was the follow up to his phantasmagoric epic Lanark, one of the great modern Scottish novels, with not a little hint of Mervyn Peake in its darkly imaginative inventiveness. Gray's novels and short stories were a visual riot, with typographical patterns, side and footnotes which sometimes threatened to engulf the main flow of text, faux reviews, blurbs and critical comments (often adverse) and some wonderful illustrations. Gray, a Scottish artist to the core, produced some wonderful portraits of his friends and fellows on the Scottish literary and artistic scene. He was also a muralist, whose large scale public works still grace parts of certain Scottish towns and cities, Glasgow in particular. His decoration of Oran Mor, the deconsecrated church turned arts centre and performance space, is a wonder. Gray turned the vaulted ceiling into a starry heaven of deepest blue, transforming the building into a truly magical place. I will briefly diverge from our fictional subject in order to show Gray's beautiful cover for Dwelly's Gaelic to English Dictionary, published out of Glasgow by Gairm Gaelic Publications. We have a copy down below. 

The Confidential Agent is a 1939 novel by Graham Greene. This is a 1960 library edition published by Heinemann. The artist of the bleakly atmospheric cover is Peter Edwards. Edwards illustrated a number of Heinemann editions of Greene. He also illustrated the cover of a 1967 novel called Ritual by a writer named David Pinner. That novel was picked up for adaptation by playwright and screenwriter Antony Shaffer, who transformed it into the script for the film The Wicker Man, one of the most enduring of British cult films, and the prime progenitor of the modern folk horror genre. And as if to show his range, Edwards, along with his wife Gunvor, produced the painted illustrations to Rev. Awdry's railway books between 1963-72. 

These two historical novels by Alfred Duggan, published in 1960 and 1961 respectively, benefit greatly in terms of authenticity from the author's experience as a historian and archaeologist. Family Favourites is set in Roman times, whilst The King of Athelney, as you might be able to work out from the cake-burning cover, is about King Alfred. The covers are by Michael Ayrton, a significant artists in the inter and post-war Neo-Romantic movement. He worked in a broad range of fields, producing some fine sculpture along with paintings, prints, illustrations and designs for the stage. His other book cover designs include some for novels by Wyndham Lewis and William Golding. In his early twenties he worked with John Minton (whom we encountered in part one) on the stage and costume designs for John Gielgud's 1942 production of Macbeth. He was also a writer, producing a body of criticism as well as poetry and novels. We have a copy of his satirical novel Tittivulus or the Verbiage Collector down in the stack. An abiding theme in Ayrton's art and writing is the Greek myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth, his depictions of the bullish monster often having a strange poignancy about them. His book The Testament of Daedalus, which is also down in the stack, covers this terrain in the form of a fictionalised memoir of the architect and inventor of Greek mythology - an artist of sorts.

Bruno Schulz was a Polish artist and writer from the city of Drohobycz, now a part of Ukraine. Schulz's shadowy prints, with their dark subject matter, bear some resemblance to the work of Goya in a similar medium. He also painted a series of  murals in 1942 for the Landau Villa in Drohobycz, which were rediscovered in 2001. These were created for the son of the SS officer living there, and were based on the stories of the Brothers Grimm. In exchange for this work, Landau temporarily spared Schulz's life at a time when the Jewish inhabitants of the city were being confined to a ghetto before being transported to the extermination camp at Belzec. Schulz is best remembered for his short stories, however, which have a dreamlike, surrealist air. He has been regarded by some as the Kafka of Drohobycz. Cinnamon Shops was a collection first published in 1934. It's more often found published under the title of another of the stories found within, The Street of Crocodiles. It was this title that the Quay Brothers, artists who make surrealist animated films, used for their interpretation of the strange spirit of the stories. Schulz's 1937 collection Sanatorium Under the Hourglass was also adapted into a surreal, labyrinthine film in 1973 -  The Hourglass Sanatorium, directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has. Bruno Schulz spent the last months of his life in the Jewish ghetto established by the occupying Nazis in 1942. He was murdered by a Gestapo officer in November 1942 for walking through the 'Aryan Quarter'. 

The Devil Came on Sunday is a 1961 novel by Scottish author Oswald Wynd, who also wrote thrillers under the pen name Gavin Black. He's best known these days for his 1977 novel The Ginger Tree, which drew on his experiences in Japan in the first half of the 20th century. It reached a wide audience through its television adaptation in the late 80s. The above cover has a wonderful British noir quality, lending it a very filmic air. Unfortunately, I have been unable to identify the artist.

Here's another one whose artist I've been unable to identify, although the cover bears some resemblance to the work of John Minton which we encountered at the beginning of part one. The author is Christopher Woodforde, or the Rev.Dr Woodforde to afford him his full honorifics. He was born in Somerset but took up curacies in East Anglia before heading back west in 1936 to become vicar at Exford, a village on Exmoor in Somerset. Later in life he became the Dean of Wells Cathedral, holding the post for three years until his death in 1962. Like M.R.James, he was a keen antiquarian and wrote a book on his specialist subject, English stained glass. Also like James, he wrote ghost stories, initially intended for reading aloud to a young audience. A number of these are included in the collection A Pad in the Straw, which we have a copy of down in the stack (no cover, alas). The story The Doom Window at Breckham is particularly notable, drawing as it does on his knowledge of stained glass. 

Here are another couple of covers whose artists I have failed to identify, but which are, in their different ways, highly striking. Hurricane Season is a 1958 novel by Ralph Winnett, and the graphic style certainly places it in that decade. It is signed 'Chalmers', but that's as far as I was able to get in uncovering the artist. Winnett himself seems to have sunk into complete obscurity. Your chance to rediscover a lost classic, perhaps! A King Reluctant is a 1952 historical adventure story about the young son of Louis XV1 turning up on the shores of Wales in the wake of the French Revolution. It was filmed in 1957 as Dangerous Exile and featured a very young Richard O'Sullivan, later to find fame as a rakishly charming TV favourite in Man About the House and Dick Turpin. Again, no hint as to the cover artist, but the ink brush portrait is rather lovely, its curving lines creating the sense of innocent boyish character with the most economical of means. 

Ionicus

Second Generation is a 1964 novel by the Welsh writer Raymond Williams, a novelist as well as highly influential cultural critic from the new left of the post-war period. This novel is set in Oxford and contrasts the gulf in experience between the world of the university and the factories which lie on the outskirts of town. The cover depicts this with great clarity. It is by Ionicus, the pen-name for the artist Joshua Charles Armitage. He was born (and died) on what became the Wirral and studied at the Liverpool School of Art. He's best known for his covers for the Penguin editions of PG Wodehouse's many books. He also created covers for more fantastical works, however, including the children's fantasy novels of Dianna Wynne Jones and the genteel horror stories of R Chetwynd-Hayes. 

Williams' 1960 novel Border Country is about a university lecturer travelling back to South Wales to visit his ailing railwayman father and reconnecting with his working class roots. There are considerable autobiographical elements feeding into the story. The cover, a lovely stylised representation of a signal box and the Welsh hills beyond, is by G.J.Galsworthy. Born in 1932, he has, like many commercial illustrators, rather fallen through the cracks of art history. Aside from this excellent cover I can only find details of a BOAC airlines poster he designed and illustrations for a Macdonald First Library book on ballet and dance from the 70s (including a slightly Wicker Man-esque maypole dancing scene). 

Finally we come to by far the most prolific cover artist in terms of the fiction we have down in the stack - Val Biro. Don't get confused by the B.S.Biro credited on the book flap of Journey of a Man. His given name was Balint Stephen Biro, but he went by the pen-name of Val. Like his namesake, the inventor of the disposable pen, he was Hungarian, and was born in Budapest in 1921. He moved to Britain in 1939 to attend the Central School of London. When war broke out, his student status protected him from being interned as an enemy alien. He graduated in 1942 and worked for the ambulance and fire services during the war. His career as an illustrator took off in 1944, and as you can see he was prolific and highly diverse in his style. His covers ranged from the tortured expressionism of the Tennessee Williams to the German film expressionism of Pursuit Till Morning (a particularly strong cover with echoes of Escher); From the line-drawn family portrait of Ursula Vaughan Williams' novel to the John Piperesque buildings of The Umbrella; and a good many where strong ink drawn characters and settings are set off by two-colour designs.

Biro was a regular contributor to Radio Times over a period of many years, producing black and white illustrations to accompany programmes and also designing a number of covers. He also frequently contributed to Country Life magazine, bound back copies of which we have down in the stack stretching back over the decades. However, Val Biro perhaps remains best known today for his much loved series of children's books featuring a vintage car named Gumdrop and its various adventures. The books reflected Biro's own interest in old cars, and the character of Mr Oldcastle, who initially saves poor old Gumdrop from the scrapheap and restores him to sparkling condition, bears no small resemblance to the author and artist. Gumdrop, in case you're interested, is an Austin Clifton Heavy Twelve-Four of 1926. Biro drove a similar model himself.  

Biro lived a long and fulfilled life in his adopted country and found many ways in which to express his artistic talents. He died in 2014 at the ripe old age of 92. He exemplifies the many artists who, even if they had found recognition for their individiual work, needed to earn a living in the commercial world. They managed to balance the requirements of their commissions with the development and expression of their own particular style. The 30s through to the 60s were a vintage era for book cover illustrations, an era which began to fade as developments in printing technology made it easier for photographic covers and collages to take over. Here amongst the fiction in the stacks we have what amounts to an art gallery, a collection of well-known names and of the unjustly forgotten. I hope you have enjoyed some of what you have seen. It's true that you can't judge a book by its cover, but some of these certainly entice you to pick them up, open the pages and discover what worlds and characters lie within. 

Part One is over here