Phyllis McGinley, Times Three
Janet Halverson designed hundreds of book covers in the second half of the last century. For this book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1961 and went through at least fifteen printings, she drew a lovely monogram. She is also given credit for the design of the book itself.
Halverson used Times New Roman throughout. The title on the cover (in green) is apparently set in Times Condensed Titling. (Jaspert, Berry, and Johnson’s Encyclopedia of Type Faces (1970) says that font exists, but doesn’t show a sample.)
Phyllis McGinley, 1905–1978, was a writer of light verse that extolled the happiness of family life in the American suburbs, completely without irony. Even though the great WH Auden (1907–1973) wrote an appreciative foreword for this prizewinning book, McGinley’s work is ignored today. My mom loved her poems, though, and often read them to us at dinner. I bought this copy because the cover had made such a strong impression on me.
