The Marquis de Sade by Simone de Beauvoir (NEL)

When you go for kinky but marketing can’t read it.

The cover designer of The Marquis de Sade chose the equally charged and funky Fette Fraktur for the title. The S, however, is from a different blackletter typeface: it’s Old English, a textura with more ecclesiastical associations. The problem with Fette Fraktur’s snake-like S is that too many readers mistake it for a G. See also this alternative approach to the same challenge, likewise from 1970s Britain.

This NEL paperback contains Simone de Beauvoir’s 1953 feminist essay Faut-il brûler Sade ? (English: Must We Burn Sade?), translated from the French by Annette Michelson, with selections from Sade’s writings chosen and translated by Paul Dinnage.