Favorite Cabell Illustrations

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Favorite Cabell Illustrations

1Crypto-Willobie
Mar 15, 2019, 8:49 pm

Here's a very cool cover image for the Italian translation of The Nightmare Has Triplets.
http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/bibliography/xyz/nightmare/nht_ital-1/ht...
(you may need to scroll sideways and down a bit to see it right)

3elenchus
Mar 16, 2019, 11:57 am

>1 Crypto-Willobie:

Interesting translation, first thought it was rendering title as The Incubus but online translators indicate that's simply Nightmare. Makes sense it has a similar root as incubus.

>2 Crypto-Willobie:

I like that Farrar & Rinehart cover, to be sure. Reminiscent both of Tarot decks and the illustrator for Robertson Davies paperbacks.

4dscottn
Dez 2, 2020, 1:18 pm

>1 Crypto-Willobie: Does your copy of L'incubo have the illustration following p.272 printed upside down?

I tend to think of the Charles Child cover and illustrations for The King Was In His Counting House as the best matched and suited to the story and tone of the book itself. I see Heirs and Assigns as easily the darkest of Cabell's cycles.

Pape's plates, spot illustrations etc. are marvelous, brilliant, but occasionally he misfires.

5dscottn
Dez 2, 2020, 1:28 pm

Fabrizio Clerici's illustrations for L'incubo are interesting, but other than being dreamlike and surreal they have no discernible relation to the book itself. I was hoping for so much more. I wish I read Italian so that I could get more out of the 20 page preface by Fernanda Pivano.

6Crypto-Willobie
Dez 2, 2020, 2:04 pm

>5 dscottn:

L'Incubo is not a translation of the whole trilogy, I think? But rather of just vol.1 or maybe some kind of conflation? I don't read Italian either.
I'll have to go check my copy for the upside down illustration.

Aside from the Del Rey paperback covers, probably my UNfavorite Cabell cover is the jacket to the US edition of Hamlet Had an Uncle. http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/bibliography/heirs/hamlet/hhu_a1/html/hh...
The UK jacket is much better. http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/bibliography/heirs/hamlet/hhu_b1/html/hh...

7elenchus
Dez 2, 2020, 3:02 pm

>6 Crypto-Willobie:

Agree the UK jacket is better, without having read the stories but judging generally. I do marvel at the spoilerific jacket copy, though. Just tell us the ending, why don't you! And then ask JBC what he thinks of it, in the bargain.

8dscottn
Editado: Dez 2, 2020, 7:59 pm

L'incubo is Smirt, Smith and Smire and a bit over 600 pages. I had never seen the UK cover for TKWIHCH until I saw it either here or at Silver Stallion in the last 3 months, very nice. However, I just love the Farrar & Rinehart cover along with the illustrations before each part and the decorations.

That UK Hamlet cover is much better. I had found multiple copies of Hamlet before I found a dustjacketed one and was so disappointed. The F&R First Gentlemen of America cover is also a letdown after Charles Child, but at least somewhat fitting. The UK First American Gent cover is also pretty awful. I would not mind that cartoony art for some other types of books, but not for Cabell or that book.

I recall somewhere a mention of a censored Pape cover of The High Place. Has anyone here seen that?