Straight Jackets: the Art of the Book Jacket University of Otago Straight Jackets: the art of the book jacket

Before Wolpe's era, the design of most Faber books was largely in the hands of Richard de la Mare, son of Walter de la Mare, and one of the directors of Faber. His attitude toward jackets was somewhat ambivalent. In his Dent Memorial Lecture (1935), he referred to the book jacket as 'that wretched thing, of which we sometimes deplore the very existence...'. With this attitude prevailing, no wonder so few early specimens survive. De la Mare was responsible for the mountainous look (using Gill Sans) on the jacket of Auden's Ascent of F6.

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