Favourite Reprint Covers

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Charles
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Favourite Reprint Covers

Post by Charles »

To follow on from our thread about favourite first edition covers, how about the UK reprints ?

To me, some of these are up with the very best of the first edition covers. Here are some of my favourites ...

1. The Devil Rides Out (Arrow 1954-1963)
2. Strange Conflict (Arrow 1959-1963)
3. Contraband (early Hutchinson paperback, 36th thousand etc)
4. Uncharted Seas (early Hutchinson paperback, 67th thousand; even if incomplete)
5. The Quest of Julian Day (Arrow 1963)
6. The Forbidden Territory (Arrow 1965)
7. The Ka of Gifford Hillary (Arrow 1961 & 1963)
8. Traitors Gate (Arrow 1961)

Though the others are very good, to me the first two (maybe three) are really exceptional.

What are your favourites ???

Best wishes !
Charles
Garry Holmes
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Post by Garry Holmes »

With a few notable exceptions (such as the ones that you mention), a lot of the paperback covers from the fifties and sixties are rather unmemorable. The seventies did bring those 'out-of-focus naked woman warming herself in front of burning half-skull' which I love for all the wrong reasons, but there were also some nice photographic covers. The 1973 (?) cover for THE SECOND SEAL, with the candle in the shape of a hand with the photo of the Kaiser on it was so striking that I was drawn to read the book on first seeing it. Those bizarre artwork covers from 1979/80 are definitely my favourites. Something like THE SHADOW OF TYBURN TREE, with the hand holding the Tarot cards, or THE SWORD OF FATE, with the 'tank-hat', are attractive and encourage you to take them off the shelf and have a look. Even without the surrealistic element, they're are beautiful pieces of artwork (THE LAUNCHING OF ROGER BROOK with the close-up of the highwayman's face is a particular favourite).
I've probably banged on about this before, but when they re-released all of the Bond books in 2007 with mock-'period' covers, a friend of mine who works at Waterstone's told me that they absolutely flew off the shelves. Penguin then seemed to get cold feet and re-re-released them with the dullest covers available, but never mind. I suspect that if someone did this with the WWII Gregory Sallust novels, with striking artwork and introductions by well known names, they would sell again. Much as I appreciate Wordsworth for getting DW back in the bookshops, the reprinted covers do rather place the books as period pieces, whereas those Bond covers make the floating customer want to buy them.
I shouldn't really admit this, but I do adore those 1974/75 covers with the posed models. This is mainly nostalgia, but I get a laugh every time that I pick up my copy of GUNMEN, GALLANTS AND GHOSTS. It looks like a particularly rubbish fancy dress party; the Gallant has at least bothered to hire a costume, although his stick-on beard is awful, the Gunman has pulled his dad's old pin-stripe out of the closet but discovered too late that it doesn't fit him, whilst the Ghost couldn't even be bothered, and is wearing an old night shirt and a bored expression.
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