Gorey Book Covers

I know that I posted Edward Gorey's cover for Conrad's The Secret Agent on the blog and his Kafka cover here.  I think I talked in very general terms about the many great Gorey book covers.  I will link to another site that features many of the best Gorey covers.  It's kind of cool that most of these books were actually mass paperbacks and not hard covers, so it isn't particularly expensive to collect these books (shipping to Canada aside).

However, I don't actually collect books just for their covers (or almost never).  Indeed, I will be parting with a book that has a reproduction of the famous Lucky Jim cover, simply because I don't like the novel itself at all.

If I happen to stumble across a copy of Conrad's The Secret Agent with Gorey's cover, then I would pick it up, but I'm not actually expecting that to happen, especially since Elliot's books is gone (and I won't be going back to John King Books* in Detroit anytime soon).

I definitely still have Kafka's America.  I used to own Puskin's The Captain's Daughter.  I don't remember parting with this, but I also haven't seen it in a while.  I might look around a bit more and potentially order it, but only if I can't find it and then come across an inexpensive copy.

I'm very tempted by the Gogol story collection but haven't entirely made up my mind whether to order a copy.

What I have done recently is to put in an order for Lermontov's A Hero of Our Times (and managed to have it shipped to Toronto).  In this case it is partly for the cover and partly because I want to compare Nabokov's translation to the more recent Randall translation.

I then put in an order for Gide's Lafcadio's Adventures (which is actually just The Vatican Cellars in a different/earlier translation).  I believe this is actually the very first cover Gorey did for Doubleday Anchor.  Outrageous shipping prices led me to send this to Chicago.  I also ordered The Quick and the Dead and Larbaud's Barnabooth, and they are also headed to Chicago.

I'm wavering but am fairly likely to order Conrad's Victory and even Conrad's Chance (which I do own in a different edition).

I also liked these covers from Henry James books (and What Maisie knew really does look like a classic Gorey set-up), but I think if I ordered them I would be giving in and collecting the books for just the covers; I would generally like to avoid doing that and indulging in another time and money sinkhole.  However, if I happen to stumble across them (with Gorey's covers in decent condition), I will make sure to snatch them up.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a book dedicated just to Gorey and his cover art (as well as a puzzle with some of the best pulled into one image).  I think I can pass on the puzzle (at least the book covers one, though the Drop Curtain puzzle is quite intriguing/appealing), but the book on covers has its attractions, though I haven't been compelled (yet) to order a copy.  As it happens, the book is in the OCAD library and I might be able to finagle my way to borrowing it for a week or so, which is a lot more sensible than buying it, n'est pas? 

But I think that is more than enough time on this fairly niche topic.

* I wasn't really thinking of picking up Gorey covers at the time, and I probably could have scored some when I was there.  Instead, I was focusing on Vintage Contemporaries, particularly anything by Exley and Joy Williams.  In the end, I managed to get one Exley (Last Notes from Home) and one Janet Hobhouse (November).  What I really wanted to pick up was Joy Williams's The Quick and the Dead, even though that wasn't a Vintage Contemporaries title.  I stopped in at Strand Books at the beginning of the month, getting a different Hobhouse and Joy William's State of Grace, but they didn't have any Exley, which was a bit surprising, nor The Quick and the Dead, which was less so.