Book industry art director Peter Mendelsund was a judge in a book jacket contest. One of the entries, a proposed cover for Nabokov's Lolita (above left), inspired Mendelsund to write an essay about the historical approaches to jacketing this particularly "complicated" book.
So what’s a designer to do? Does a designer attempt a (truly) shocking cover, in order to properly represent the ethical disquiet that Nabokov’s narrative provokes?
“She was shaking from head to toe (from fever) She complained of a painful stiffness…and I thought of poliomyelitis as any American parent would. Giving up all hope of intercourse…”
Groan.
In surveying the extant editions I don't see many that rise to the challenge.
Perhaps the first edition had it right: the so-straight-it-must-contain-something-dangerous approach, otherwise known as the “brown paper wrapper gambit,” (which in this case is green.)
"1. Fictions" (Thanks, Will Schofield!)
