Two Unusual Covers
I check Ebay everyday looking (hoping) for something Thurber I’ve never seen before. Yesterday two books showed up. Both have unusual covers (unusual in that I never would’ve guessed they had anything to do with a Thurber book). A coincidence: all of the titles shown were written by Thurber, but not illustrated by him (his eyesight was failing him by the early 1940s).
The first of today’s unusual editions: Many Moons, published in Japan in 1968. I’m showing a sample illustration for this edition — very Thurber-like!.
And here’s what the original US edition (published in 1943) looks like (illustrated, as it says right there on the cover, by Louis Slobodkin):
Here’s the other unusual cover that turned up — it’s a two-fer: The 13 Clocks & The Wonderful O, with a very un-Thurberlike illustration.* I’ve not found a date for this particular version. If pressed, I’d guess 1960s.
Here’re the original US editions of both titles, both illustrated, as you can see, by Marc Simont. The 13 Clocks was first published in 1950, and the The Wonderful O in 1957:
*the illustration is by Ronald Searle, from a different edition, published in 1962 (shown below)…thanks to Stephen Nadler of Attempted Bloggery for pointing that out!
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James 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
Do you know who illustrated the British edition? It looks like Searle to me.
Attempted Bloggery’s Stephen Nadler, who knows his Searle, just notified me that the drawing appeared in the 1962 edition, illustrated by Searle. I’ve added that information to today’s post.