You might hesitate to read the classics if you came across these paperback editions. I cannot believe these covers sell books!
- Oh, dear, have these women had lip jobs? Penguin, Penguin, you are letting us down.
2. This vamp on the cover of this Wordsworth Classic is certainly not Mrs. Dalloway!
3. What a terrifying cover! I would never buy this Harvest paperback edition of Katherine Anne Porter’s elegant short stories! The old cover features a rose in the left-hand corner. Wonder why they changed it…
4. For Whom the Bell Tolls is a terrible novel – Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote a brilliant satire of it – but I do not actually dislike this 1951 cover.
5. Dearest Madame Bovary, you look a bit slutty . I pictured you as pretty and fashionable but less like a 1960s model – and is that a Regency gown? No, I would not buy this 1965 Airmont edition.
6. Wuthering Heights is one of my favorites, but it’s all too easy to go wrong with the cover art. I cannot say Penguin was having a good day in 2009 when the design team approved this.
And that’s all for the present.
No I wouldn’t. I have scissered (misspelled) covers off books.
We do like our book covers, with appropriate art and no typos!
I wouldn’t. I would never have believed these covers were real. The Age of Innocence is shocking, such a bad taste. Who are these caricaturish women supposed to be? Countess Olenska and May Welland? They are absolutely not. What a disaster. The cover also suggests the two contrasting women’s battle for something, which misses the point of Wharton’s story completely.
I agree with you: this cover is bizarre for Penguin. These women characters seem generic – caricatures of no one in particular. The artist seems not to have read Edith Wharton!
Some heavy stuff here. Have a fab weekend. xx