To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Harvest/HBJ, 1978)
This paperback edition of Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse was published by Harvest/HBJ, New York, in 1978. The cover illustration is by John Alcorn (1935–1992), a Cooper Union alumnus who worked for Push Pin Studios as well as for Lou Dorfsman at CBS (via Lubalin Center). The prolific designer and illustrator would have turned 86 today (via #LfABirthday).
Author name and title are set in a lesser known design by Bob Newman: It’s Salisbury Bold. The oldstyle serif with the distinguishing single-storey g was issued as a Letraset original in 1974, in a single bold weight. I can imagine that its brief was to fill the gap between the then popular ITC Souvenir Bold (minus the Art Nouveau flavor) and Windsor Bold (but less whacky), both of which were carried by Letraset under license, and Letraset’s own Caslon Black (1969), with less contrast. To my knowledge, Salisbury Bold hasn’t been digitized. Newman is also the designer of the recently featured Turtle and Penny Farthing, among several other Letraset faces.
Via Felt Books, a mini vintage paperback book cover archive maintained by Annie Szafranski.
4 Comments on “To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Harvest/HBJ, 1978)”
Interesting type. Looks to me sort of like Cooper Black with some of the excess width shaved off.
Yep, that’s also a good way of describing it! The letters e and t are particularly Cooper-esque.
The artwork seems cool as well. That obscure font has got a currently work-in-progress revival by Quinn Davis (of The Jigsaw Foundry and Fonts in Use user) under the same name (as Salisbury). Mind if we can check it out?
www.fontspace.com/salisbury…
Thanks for the pointer, Jay. I’ve added a link to the page for Salisbury Bold. It looks decent, although the character set of the alpha version is still limited, and currently supports little more than English. I wonder whether Quinn was able to find out the whereabouts of Bob Newman (or his heirs), and get the blessing of the original designer. I gave it a try a while ago, but didn’t find any leads.