Wonders and Surprises by Phyllis McGinley
This anthology of over a hundred poems was edited by Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978), an American author of children’s books and poetry who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961.
Muriel Nasser designed the book jacket for the first edition by J.B. Lippincott & Co. For the typography, she chose West Cooper Nouveau Swash 10, the bold italic weight of Dave West’s typeface family inspired by Cooper Black.
Several of the letterforms don’t match those in other in-use examples. The S appears to be an enlarged and stretched lowercase form, and the M doesn’t have a descending swash (cf. the album cover to A Message To The Nation). Also compare the P to the one on the Raw Pearl cover and the G to the Gordon Lightfoot cover. And it goes on: c and r have less distinctive terminals, the i dot is smaller, and the y looks different as well. Some of these differences might be explained by the presence of alternates – I haven’t seen a full a glyph set for this typeface style – but I tend to think we’re looking at a case of “lettering derived from typeface”.
