The Pocket Dictionary of American Slang by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner (eds.)

A fun use of Davison Art Nouveau with alternating glyph colors and an added shadow effect, on the cover of The Pocket Dictionary of American Slang.

This book is the comprehensive abridgement of the Dictionary of American Slang edited by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner and issued by Thomas Y. Crowell in 1960. The first Pocket Books printing is from March 1968, with a red cover. Many sources date the shown cover design to 1968, too, but that’s incorrect – the date refers to the copyright of the content. Oftentimes typefaces can help with dating. Davison Art Nouveau was already around in 1967, and Korinna is tricky to pinpoint: while ITC released it in 1974, Photo-Lettering showed the revival already in 1971, and might have carried it even earlier. However, the use of ITC Avant Garde Gothic on the back cover tells us that it can’t be any older than from 1970. Kudos to Vintage Bookseller from Duvall, WA, who state that their offered copy of the 10th printing featuring this design is from 1977. The cover price is another clue for dating: because the 10th printing was sold for $1.95, and the 13th for $2.50, it’s safe to assume that the one sold for $3.95 came later.