The Eternal Adam and the New World Garden by David W. Noble
In The Eternal Adam and the New World Garden, historian and historiographer David W. Noble (1925–2018) investigates “the central myth in the American novel since 1830”. According to Richard A. Gerber’s review,
David W. Noble argues that the first European immigrants to America so firmly established the pattern of viewing the New World as virgin soil in which sinful man (The Eternal Adam) would be reborn that every major novelist from James Fenimore Cooper to Saul Bellow has been compelled to treat that problem as the “central theme” in his writing.
First published by George Braziller in 1968, this is the paperback edition that followed in 1970 in Grosset’s Universal Library. The typographic cover design pairs three different serif typefaces: Ed Benguiat’s high-contrast Fat Face, Montage, in its Extra Condensed width, (a phototype version of) Bodoni Bold Condensed (Sol Hess, 1934) which here serves as a cognate style suitable for smaller text sizes, and the unfailing Times in all caps for the authors’ names.
