A Sort of Life by Graham Greene
Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Steve and tagged with “walbaum”. License: All Rights Reserved.
A textbook example of “one typeface, one size”, featuring Walbaum. A Sort of Life is the first volume of the “long-awaited” autobiography by British novelist Graham Greene. First published in hardback by The Bodley Head in 1971, this is the paperback edition published as Penguin Books 3495 in 1972, with a cover design by Derek Birdsall.
2 Comments on “A Sort of Life by Graham Greene”
There’s a whole spread about Birdsall’s work for Penguin Books on the Graham Greene list in Phil Baines’ wonderful Penguin By Design. A Cover Story 1935–2005: apparently, Greene himself pushed for an all-type cover design because he thought that he had become famous enough for his books to sell on the strength of his name alone (!). Sales nosedived and Penguin soon had to go back to illustrated covers. Authors, heh ?
Thank you for that. HUGE Graham Greene fanatic here. Love this version. Curious if it has the same author photo as mine on the back cover. The introspective photo of Graham with forefinger on the upper lip.
FYI the superior Greene autobiography is Ways of Escape.
Also, I think the French are superior to Americans in how they do book design. Text is enough. Let imagery emerge in the reading of the book.