An oddity! Thurber’s drawing on the cover of Sports Illustrated (November 7, 1960) seems to have eluded Edwin Bowden’s essential James Thurber: A Bibliography. It also does not merit a mention in any of my other go-to Thurber books (the biographies and letters books).
The one place it is mentioned, and appears, is the fab A Mile and A Half Of Lines: The Art of James Thurber, edited by Michael Rosen. Mr. Rosen notes that the cover drawing was likely done some thirty years earlier.
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Thurber’s A-Z Entry:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website