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The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Grove Press, 1992)

Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Nov 19th, 2021. Artwork published in
circa 1992
.
    17
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Grove Press, 1992)
Source: davidhudson.tumblr.com Transatlantic. License: All Rights Reserved.

Matthew Carter’s Shelley Script on the cover of a paperback edition of The Master and Margarita, published by Grove Press in the early 1990s, in Mirra Ginsburg’s translation from 1967. From Wikipedia:

The Master and Margarita (Russian: Мастер и Маргарита) is a novel by Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940 during Stalin’s regime. A censored version was published in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967, after the writer’s death. The manuscript was not published as a book until 1967, in Paris. A samizdat version circulated that included parts cut out by official censors, and these were incorporated in a 1969 version published in Frankfurt. The novel has since been published in several languages and editions.

Shelley Script (1972) is based on the calligraphy of early eighteenth century English writing master George Shelley. It comes in three degrees of flourish; Adagio, Vivace, and Presto; this being Presto, with the curls on the swash cap M nicely echoing the cat’s tongue. While previous releases had three separate styles, Linotype’s OpenType version merges them into one font, with “Presto” made available via the Swash feature. Fun fact: The roman is another revival made by Carter in the 1970s: Cochin goes back to a design by Peignot & Fils from 1914. Carter reworked it at Linotype in 1977.

The cover was designed by Krystyna Skalski, with an illustration by Robert Goldstrom. The exact date is unclear to me. Cooper Hewitt dates it to 1991. The back cover suggests a printing date in 1992.

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