In a previous post about another British book cover from 2013, I wrote: “What looks like a custom dry brush letter­ing job at first glance has actu­ally star­ted out with type.” The very same is true for this cover by David Pearson. Here, the basis was the Brush Extreme style of B-Movie Retro.

This script typeface by Die Typonauten is “a typographic homage to horror films from the 1930s and 1940s, featuring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and others; films about vampires, monsters from the swamp, and creepy mummies.” — Peter Reichard

For this use, the letterforms were heavily customized. Not only were they considerably condensed; the tailed ‘l’ was replaced with the straight ‘I’, ‘A’ got a longer crossbar, and ‘F’ was completely reimagined.

Animal Farm was first published in 1945 and made into an animated film a decade later.
See the first US edition here and more from Penguin’s Great Orwell series on Creative Review.

First American edition, published by Harcourt, Brace & Co. in 1946.