The books they tried to ban

Test your knowledge of censors and would-be censors in this quiz from the Guardian.

The cover illustration is from the first printing of Candide in the Penguin Classics series (1947). This was volume 4 in the series. The text may be a very early design by Jan Tschichold, who took up his role at Penguin in March 1947, but the setting, in Monotype Bembo 270, does not follow his famous composition style – dashes are unspaced em-rules, there are extra spaces after sentence full stops, and the long-tailed R is used.

The cover is the original pre-Tschichold design by John Overton; the roundel is by William Grimmond.

Edit
I’ve now managed to look closely at the first few Penguin Classics, and the Overton/Tschichold question is rather more complex than implied by the above, or by the simple statement in Baines, ‘only the first seven titles appeared in this design, before it was re-styled by Jan Tschichold in 1947–8’. Not surprisingly, the transition from one design to another in a series in production was not clear-cut. There are early PCs with Overton covers/Overton text; Overton covers/Tschchold texts and vice versa. Some books feature pre-war bowing Penguins, some a Penguin standing on an open book (Baines, p. 251); at least one with a Tschichold Penguin on the half-title, but no device on the title-page. Another has an Overton ‘jacket’ wrapped around what looks like a Tschichold cover.

Baines, P. (2005) Penguin by design. London: Allen Lane (pp. 46, 64–7)

What the readers think …

This blog has some interesting – if light – responses to the redesign of the Oxford World’s Classics series. The overall feeling is very positive, but with some strange asides (‘don’t they look a lot like the Penguin ones?’ – Sophie; how?). The continuity of the colour red from the old design to the new is clearly a good thing (‘I will miss the red banner though. I relied on it to find them on the bookstore shelves!’ – Stefanie; ‘These still have the red on the spine, but it's a bit smaller.’ – Tara).

And I’m glad that someone else has noticed the optical illusion that occurs when you compare the old and the new: the previous design (come on, let's be honest, my old design) made the books look taller and thinner, whereas the new design makes them look wider (‘if they are, that would be a big plus!’ says Sophie; sorry Sophie, they’re exactly the same size).

Are they related? – part two

Donna Payne, art editor at Faber, has replied to Peter Collingridge, pointing out that the Faber Children’s Classics covers, designed by Pentagram, predate the Penguin Classics design by five years or so. Let’s just recall the basic Penguin Classics look, combining Futura Medium caps with Mrs Eaves Italic. Although the Penguin design transposes author and title, the configuration (line of caps; centred logo; line of caps, line of U&lc italic; all type centred) is remarkably similar.

So, just how many variants are possible in the presentation of series name, author and title? As an antidote, here is website praising Penguin UK’s designs (but panning Mother's Kafka covers).