Penguin Paperback Variations on Nabokov's Dozen

Sources: Alexis Orloff and Samuel Snoek-Brown. 

Nabokovilia: Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty

From Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty:

"Nabokov's Family fled Russia. How could the young Nabokov, sitting innocently and elegantly in a red chair, leafing through a book on butterflies imagine such displacement. Such loss." (p. 7)

Postcards: Ted CoConis Fawcett Crest paperback Ada cover

Here's Ted Coconis's Ada cover! (Fawcett Crest, 1970)

Postcards: Transparent Things Fawcett Crest 1972 paperback cover, by Ted CoConis

This paperback cover for Fawcett Crest's 1972 edition of Transparent Things features a Ted CoConis illustration. (CoConis also did a terrific one for 1970 Fawcett Crest Ada: I'll post that one in a bit -- it was in the old Fulmerford site. (That cover has since been used, Coconis's web site informs us, for a CD cover: Year Long Disaster.) More on CoConis and Nabokov in Paul Maliszewski's "Paperback Nabokov," available in McSweeney's Issue 4.)

Postcards: Steinberg's 18 October 1969 New Yorker Cover

Detail from Saul Steinberg's cover for the 18 October issue of the New Yorker (visible: Nabokov (between "Gogol" and "Hi Nabor") and Ada (between "Ada" and "Hedda"). (Via the Nabokv-L Listserv.)

Nabokov Poster

A Nabokov poster (for a design class): love the owl & the colors (see the note -- she's fixing the typo):

Laughter in the Dark cover

I'm thrilled to bits with the specimen-case Vintage reissues: they're elegant, they're lovely, and they're lepidopterally-minded without hitting your head over with it with a whole bunch of butterflies. I don't think there's getting away from the motif, at any rate, and besides John Gall did a terrific job of using it to generate a coherent, immediately identifiable set. (I'm way indebted to Gerard Genette in my dissertation, so the moment I hear "covers" I immediately think of his Paratexts.)

I'll be reposting a couple of less coherent, less immediately identifiable covers from a section of the site that was shunted over into Tripod ages ago. Since then, there's been a bunch of folk who've done a far more impressive job of collecting Nabokov covers. My own little collection, Postcards, is still around, but it's way smaller and way less comprehensive than A Nabokov Coverage and Zimmer's Covering Lolita: both are impressive, the former particularly for its extensive dedication to international editions.

• Addenda: More cover discussions today -- not on Nabokov but on the A-Frame. Click here for an explanation and an analysis and here for an extensive gallery.
• Even more addenda! (Via the VN Wikipedia entry.) More Nabokov covers! Robert Nelson's Vladimir Nabokov Writings - First Appearance Database (First Book/Pamphlet Appearances of Nabokov Writings)