Paperback 1170: Signet Classic CW1077 (36th (?), n.d. (~late-'60s))
Title: Lady Chatterley's Lover
Author: D.H. Lawrence
Cover artist: Thomas Upshur
Condition: 8/10
Value: $8-10
- Something about this book (a new acquisition—$1 at a bookstore in New Haven) has brought me back to this blog after a month-long hiatus. I'll let you guess what that something is.
- Sincerely, though, this cover is utterly arresting. Kind of breathtaking. I showed my wife and her only response was a stunned "oh my god." That is a breast that demands to be looked at. I guess you might say that about any naked breast, if you're into breasts, but I'm fascinated by how much mileage this picture gets out of that small, uniform, soft pink disk inside a black semicircle. Total simplicity and economy of design, resulting in something way more evocative and erotic than many, many covers I've seen that are straining much harder after sexual effect.
- This painting is verging on the abstract. It hints at a kind of yin/yang symbol. There are no distinguishing facial features on the woman besides the smile (which, by suggesting pleasure, adds to the eroticism). The pitch black hair has an enigmatic flow that makes it look like someone in profile (a man?) but it's just an illusion. The design is simple, yet complex and even weird enough to be riveting.
- Somehow one breast is far, far more naked than two. I cannot explain the math. This artist knows that the book he's designing for is a frequently banned book, notorious for its sexual content, but rather than playing it up, he plays it down. Or, rather, he plays it way up precisely by playing it down, eliminating . I'm normally drawn to much more realistic, frequently lurid, and sometimes unintentionally hilarious cover art, but this one really impressed me, from a design perspective.
Best things about this back cover:
- This is the part where they reassure you that you are holding a serious book of great literary merit and cultural importance. It's also where they let you know that it's got the hot parts put back in (not one but two "unexpurgated"s!).
- I always say: nothing hotter than legalese. Everyone knows that a blurb from [squints] literary executor Laurence Pollinger is a guarantee of real high-class filth.
- Frieda Lawrence was D.H. Lawrence's widow. She outlived him by a good quarter century (d. 1956)
Page 123~
"How did you come?" she panted.
Wow this book just gets right to it.
~RP
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