Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) is considered to be one of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. He was a leading figure in the Russian Futurism movement, which was concerned with dynamism, speed, machinery and urban life. Its members, also, publicly repudiated the literature of the past, outlining their intention in the introduction of their manifesto: A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (published December 1912) to: “Throw Pushkin, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy overboard from the ship of modernity.”
Rather than use words to express romanticized thoughts and sentiments, as did his literary predecessors, Mayakovsky believed they were the raw production materials for manufacturing new poetic techniques that experimented with and expanded language. To express modernity, he used street slang and discarded traditional poetic rhythms, such as, iambic and trochaic metres.
Throughout his career, Mayakovsky inextricably combined art and politics. He enthusiastically embraced the October Revolution, designing propaganda posters for the Russian state news agency; but his Avant-garde radicalism soon clashed with the culturally philistine Soviet State under Stalin, which he attacked in his 1928 play: The Bedbug. Sadly, Maykovsky’s increasing political disillusionment and artistic curtailment contributed to his depression that led him to take his own life at the age of only thirty-six.
The book in the photographs is a collection of Maykovsky’s plays, articles and essays in English translation, published by Raduga Publishers, Moscow, in 1987.
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Astounding Science Fiction, today published under the title of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, was founded in the 1930s and in 2013 became the longest continuously running magazine of the science fiction genre. During its illustrious history, it has been instrumental in nurturing the careers of many writers who would go on to become giants of the genre, such as Lester del Rey, Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt and Robert Heinlein and it was, also, the first to print L. Ron Hubbard’s pseudoscientific theories on Dianetics, the belief system upon which scientology is based. As a testament to its far reaching impact, copies of Astounding Science Fiction can even be found in the library of the International Space Station.
Described by Isaac Asmiov as: “the most powerful force in science fiction ever,” John W. Campbell, the magazine’s editor from 1938 till his death in 1971, not only discovered new talent, but was also highly influential on the development of the genre: asking writers to avoid long descriptions of technology, as these would become redundant for readers of the future, in favour of focusing on the more human aspects of the story, as he believed: “It is the man, not the idea or machine that is the essence” of science fiction storytelling.
The books in the photographs are British editions dating from the 1950s. These tended to be slimmer versions of their American counterparts and had similar, but subtlety different covers; likely to avoid infringement of copyright.
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In the preface to The Lady’s Dressing Room (published in 1892), its French author, Baroness Staffe, asks the question: “What is life, what is love, without some illusions?” The book, a guide for women on how to be beautiful, primarily, for the sake of their husbands, offers tips on: skincare, exercise and, even, rhinoplasty. Baroness Staffe seems to have applied the art of illusion to every aspect of her being; she was not, in fact, a real aristocratic Baroness, but a descendant of more humble, middle-class stock.
Although renowned for her beauty, the English translator of this book, Lady Colin Campbell (1857- 1911, born Gertrude Elizabeth Blood), had a far from happy marriage. Her whirlwind romance with Lord Campbell, who proposed after a three day courtship, led to one of the most scandalous and protracted divorce cases in Victorian society, with both sides accusing the other of adultery. Although her divorce petition was, ultimately, unsuccessful and led to her being shunned by high society, rather than quietly wither away after leaving her husband, she flourished as a journalist, becoming the first female editor of a major London newspaper and socialized in artistic and literary circles, where her friends and admirers included Whistler and George Bernard Shaw.
The book in the photographs is a first edition of the English translation, published in 1892 by Cassell & Company.
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In 1962, Herbert Spencer published a sixteen-page article in Typographica magazine charting the history and evolution of Penguin’s cover designs. In this article, he credited Penguin’s then head of Design, Germano Facetti, with modernizing their look. Although it was Facetti’s vision to modernize and unify the Penguin series, it was a lesser known designer, Romek Marber, who was, in fact, responsible for the creation of a new and archetypal template that would come to define Penguin covers throughout the 1960s, and even into the 1970s. At Facetti’s behest, Spencer later published a two-page correction, giving Marber his rightful recognition.
Romek Marber(1925) was a Polish freelance designer who first came to Britain in 1946. On the strength of his work for the Economist, Facetti first commissioned him to design covers for Simeon Potter’s Our Language and Language in the Modern World. Soon after, Marber fought off competition from other designers to be given the chance to revamp the Penguin Crime series. For this, Marber devised a grid pattern (now referred to as the ‘Marber Grid’) where, essentially, the typography occupied one third of the cover and the illustration the remaining two thirds. Initially, applied to just the Crime Series, this layout was later adopted and applied to the majority of Penguin’s other lines.
Whilst Marber’s influence on Penguin’s cover designs was comprehensive, taken in isolation, the Crime Series can be regarded as iconic in its own right. To create these highly stylized and distinctive images he employed various techniques, such as: photographic distortion, collage, geometric patterns, and, at times, even the use of his own face. Marber designed at least 71 covers for the series and read each of the books, as for him: “doing a cover was the excitement of trying to get across what I had just read in a single image.”
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Judging books by their cover
