First UK edition of From Bauhaus to Our House, Tom Wolfe’s narrative on modern architecture, published in 1982 by Jonathan Cape.

Both the author’s name and the title are shown in Milton Glaser’s Baby Teeth, using the Letraset version issued in 1974. Jacket designer Craig Dodd did a few modifications, though: the horizontal in H was made thinner, and the W was turned upside-down and repurposed as M, apparently to make Wolfe’s first and last names rhyme visually. Last but not least, Dodd opened up the O with a vertical slit – after all, this letter appears quite a lot, and the default counterless shape would have be too dominant. The O in the last line escaped this treatment – it’s hiding behing a stylized building anyway.

From Wikipedia:

Midnight’s Children is a 1981 novel by Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India’s transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist story told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, set in the context of historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive.

Dust jacket for the first edition of Ian Fleming’s debut novel Casino Royale, devised by the author himself. The titling is likely illustrated, but based on Fry’s Ornamented. The title on the spine of jacket and hardcover is closer to the typeface’s original letterforms, see S. Text on the jacket is set predominantly in what looks to be Times New Roman. Title page text set in Bell.

Dust jacket (front)

Full dust jacket with inner flaps

Cover and spine

Title page

Book jacket (front), Albert A. Knopf edition [More info on ISFDB]

Michael Crichton’s historical novel about the Great Gold Robbery of 1855 was first published in 1975, by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom, and by Alfred A. Knopf in the United States.

The typography for the book cover and the title page of both editions explores the obvious Western theme, with a different typeface for each line, including a shaded 19th-century slab named Gold Rush, a bold Didone, two Clarendons, and a “railroad slab” (all-caps Figaro) for “Train”.

While Cape used this setup for the dust jacket, too (design by Leigh Taylor), Paul Bacon fancied something else for Knopf’s version, and went with a typeface that has stylistic roots in the 1890s: Hawthorn (Letraset, 1968) is a bolder rendition of De Vinne Condensed.

Book jacket, Jonathan Cape edition

Title page, Albert A. Knopf edition

Book cover with spine, Albert A. Knopf edition

Book cover (front), Albert A. Knopf edition

Book jacket, Albert A. Knopf edition

Source: www.abebooks.com Darren Winston (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Portnoy’s Complaint, first US edition, Random House, 1969. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.

All of Philip Roth’s books published between 1969 and 1975 carry the same typographic signature. It consists of a bold condensed Caslon variant with swashes, set center-aligned, with the title and the author’s name separated by color.

The first one in this series of hardcovers is the novel Portnoy’s Complaint, published by Random House in 1969. The jacket design is credited to Paul Bacon. Interestingly, this visual identity was maintained for subsequent books by other publishers, too, including UK editions by Jonathan Cape — it’s not the identity of the publisher, but really one of the author. Reading Myself and Others, an anthology of essays published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1975, was the last in this specific design, but Roth continued to be associated with bold swashy Caslons.

The exact typeface has not been identified yet. A possible candidate is Caslon Contempo by Photo-Lettering, Inc. The sample in the One Line catalog from 1971 doesn’t show any swashes, but these might be custom additions. Some of the details appear to be customized anyway, see e.g. the two different forms for G in “Gang” and “Great”.

Source: www.flickr.com Boy de Haas. License: All Rights Reserved.

Our Gang, first US edition, Random House, 1971. Note the swash g that forms an interlinear ligature with the i below.

Source: www.flickr.com Boy de Haas. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Breast, Holt, first US edition, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.

Source: en.wikipedia.org Holt, Rinehart & Winston. License: Public Domain.

The Great American Novel, first US edition, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973, in red, white, and blue. Mary M. Ahern is credited for the design (of the interior?).

Source: www.abebooks.com Orlando Booksellers  (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

The Great American Novel, first UK edition, Jonathan Cape, 1973.

Source: www.flickr.com Boy de Haas. License: All Rights Reserved.

Reading Myself and Others, first US edition, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975. The letterforms here are slightly different, with wider proportions, smaller caps, and longer ascenders. The swash ball terminals appear to be horizontally stretched.

Source: www.abebooks.com Setanta Books (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Reading Myself and Others, first UK edition, Jonathan Cape, 1975. The letterforms are the same as on the US jacket, but the words were rearranged. The initial R got more legroom, the y in turn now crashes into the O.

Not included in this compilation is My Life as a Man, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston (US) and Jonathan Cape (UK) in 1974 — it was featured in an earlier post by Stephen.

Jonathan Cape, London 1978. Cover design by Raymond Hawkey, with centered caps from Windsor Elongated (and Times New Roman for the stamp).

This post provides a broad overview over the diverse cover designs for some of the editions of Len Deighton’s alternative history novel SS-GB, set in a United Kingdom conquered and occupied by Germany during World War II.

The first edition was published by Jonathan Cape in 1978, with a cover design by Raymond Hawkey (1930–2010), who was a friend and fellow art school graduate of Deighton. In an obituary for Hawkey, Rob Mallows quotes Len Deighton about Hawkey’s dedicated approach:

For SS-GB, […] Ray produced a book of British stamps complete with Hitler's head that stamp collectors cherish. He also had the photographer Adrian Flowers make a photo of Whitehall that could be exactly matched with a parade in Berlin to make a fake postcard of Hitler in London taking the salute of a march past.

This photo appears on the back of the dust cover.

Red and black is a recurrent theme. Unsurprisingly, several of the typographic choices are either decidedly British (Windsor!), or stereotypically (Nazi-)German, i.e. blackletter in general and schaftstiefelgrotesk in particular, see the Harper edition at the end of this post, as well as the title sequence for the current BBC series.

The title page seems to show the letters ‘SS-GB’ in Fette Fraktur, but what we actually are looking at is a fantasy ‘S’ (presumably built from other glyph parts), a modified ‘G’ (with the top right borrowed from ‘E’), and the letter ‘V’ standing in for ‘B’. The real fraktur thing was apparently deemed too difficult to decipher for the English readership.

Panther, 1979. While the ‘SS’ part resembles Futura Condensed Extrabold, ‘GB’ and the author’s name are in an unidentified heavy grotesque more in line with the English models, featuring caps of regular widths and a very closed and round ‘G’ with spur. The smaller text is probably Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed.

Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. The curly letterforms rather say 1900s (or, well, 1970s) than 1940s. They are probably custom drawn, and not from a typeface.

Coleccion Naranja, Bruguera, Barcelona, 1980. Banco has been chosen to approximate the angular SS runes.
The illustration shows jackboots (in German: Schaftstiefel) stomping over the Union Jack. This kind of boot gave its name to the derogatory term for the simplified gotisch typefaces that mushroomed in the first years of Nazi Germany.

Harper, 2009. The letterforms for the author’s name seem to be adopted directly from the Panther edition shown above. The first name was made a tad longer by means of stretching. Tannenberg (1934) is used for the title.

A bold condensed Caslon, similar to Caslon Black or FB Caslon, with added swashes which could be customized or a phototype modification (a la Benguiat Caslon).

First UK edition by Jonathan Cape, 1974

First edition of the seventh James Bond book, published by Jonathan Cape in 1959.

Unlike some authors with complex publishing histories, Ian Fleming is straight-forward and his first editions are easy to identify. He wrote 14 James Bond books, all of which were published by Jonathan Cape in London between 1953 and 1966.

— Laura Massey at Peter Harrington

Source: www.davidgentleman.com David Gentleman. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.davidgentleman.com David Gentleman. License: All Rights Reserved.

In 1966, David Gentleman designed a series of four illustrated children books about a little girl on holiday. In addition to Greece and Ireland, Fenella also travelled to Spain and the south of France. The books were released in 1967 by Jonathan Cape Ltd., London.

The type for the titles is a combination of two heavily decorated and shaded display typefaces. The first one is an ornamented fat face known in the mid-20th century as Macdonald. It has been revived digitally as Bodoni Ornamental by Michael Hagemann of Font Mesa. The second one goes back to a typeface from c. 1820 by the Paris-based foundry of Joseph Gillé. It was adopted by Deberny & Peignot, where it went under the name of Lettres Ombrées Ornées. Dieter Steffmann made a freely available (but unsatisfactory and limited) digitization of the same name in 2002. José Jiménez’ commercial version, Parisian Ornamentals (2010), is even worse and maybe derived from the freebie. If you happen to know more about the origin of the historic typeface designs, I’d be grateful for any pointers [see comments]. The italic fat face is Thorowgood.

You can see two interior pages from Fenella in the South of France on the website of Picturebook Museum.

Source: www.abebooks.com Robin Summers Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.abebooks.com Robin Summers Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.amazon.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.amazon.com License: All Rights Reserved.