Sunday 11 September 2011

Electrified Sexual Positions on a Sinking Ship

Some nice covers revealed in Penguin CLassics US's catalogue for early 2012...

Malika Favre's picto-porno-typographic cover for the Deluxe Classics edition of Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra, which I imagine will wrap all the way round the back and onto the French flaps. The red slashes of the gloves and stockings are the perfect extra element which makes this, I think.



See also Favre's rather more Sapphic variation on this, from her site (click for a bigger version, as the actress said to the bishop):


Then there's Max Ellis's cutaway cover for Titanic, First Accounts, another Deluxe Classics also making full use of the flaps. Here's the front and the full fold-out cover (sorry for the low-res version of the latter, but it's all I could find).




Here's a Max Ellis alphabet, vegetable in theme:



And finally, designer unknown, this simple but eye-catching cover for the great Nikola Tesla's autobiography, using the best handsome-devil photo of him that I know of.


Bonus content: The Doctor Who theme played on twin Tesla coils...



..and this great photo of Mark Twain in Tesla's lab, 1894...

5 comments:

Ian Koviak said...

Yeah, that Kama sutra does wrap to reveal the whole title made of the body letters. Great/simple idea, but the execution/style of the art is wonderful. Little bit of deco/art neuvo/egyptian—for a classic Indian text. Only under the auspice of Paul Buckley.

JRSM said...

He's a bit of a bugger, that Paul Buckley: after getting his book on 75 Penguin covers, I had to buy a whole lot of them because of their beauty, and now I've nowehere to put them...

Ian Koviak said...

I'll keep them safe for you;)

KrupKrup said...

Have you seen Kate Beaton's comic on Tesla? He is/was famously known as a celibate if I'm not mistaken and to be among a post of book covers with erotic undertones is so deliciously funny:)

JRSM said...

Though I'm a big Beaton fan (and am very much looking forward to her imminent book) I'd forgotten that one!