Designing a Book Jacket. [How to Do It, number 65.]

FIRST EDITION, extensively illustrated with various examples, some with use of colour-printing, title-page with a faint spot at head, pp. 96, 4to, original red boards, backstrip lettered in black, free endpapers with a few tiny faint spots, dustjacket by the author, slightly rubbed and nicked at extremities, very good. An excellent treatise from an artist whose own work included designs for science fiction titles from Michael Joseph and Faber - his cover for Arthur Koestler's 'Age of Longing' (Collins 1951) is perhaps his finest in the medium, evincing his belief that 'lettering is important'. Curl avers that, whilst such design-work has attained the 'standing of a serious activity for the graphic artist', it remains generally the preserve of those at the beginning of their career (often their 'first freelance commission') - the level of remuneration in comparison to other work meaning that most will have to cultivate work in other fields, commercial or creative. He emphasises the value of a literary sensibility, and suggests that the best examples show a combination of 'selling factor [.] taste in design and idea [.] with the expression of the spirit of the book' - in which cases they become 'more than an ephemeral aid to selling'.…