Friday, May 24, 2019

Norton has redesigned the cover of the 2nd edition of Melville's THE CONFIDENCE-MAN


Yesterday in the mail, a pleasant surprise.
The Cover Artist was the late Robert Shore. As I understand it, he had lost his suite of illustrations for this book done in the 1970s for a very expensive edition that never appeared. As Kathy Reilly already suspects, I don't often throw things away, even old proofs of pictures from Sendak. In 2004 or so when we were preparing the 2nd edition, with Mark Niemeyer collaborating so as to have a youthful partner carry on in case I did not last long enough to do the 3rd edition, I suggested Shore's work for the cover, and Norton located him in NYC. His payment for the 2006 2nd edition may be the only he ever received.  I like the new design very much.

Many hundreds of the 2nd edition in the cover on the left have been in hands of French academics in the last couple of years because of the book's appearance as one of 5 texts in the national Agrégation exams.


No comments:

Post a Comment