Salambo by Gustave Flaubert, Berkley Books
Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Steve and tagged with “roberta”. License: All Rights Reserved.
Berkley Books S1180, 1966. Cover Artist: James Bama
“SALAMBO” is either in Roberta III, an all-caps design claimed by Bob Trogman, or in the virtually identical Xenotype 3481 by Photo-Lettering, Inc., a face with a lowercase that is slightly different from Roberta Regular, shown in Alphabet Thesaurus Vol. 2, 1965 (and in One Line from 1971 as Staudel Xenotype J).
2 Comments on “Salambo by Gustave Flaubert, Berkley Books”
This is definitely Staudel Xenotype J, which is distinguishable from Roberta III by numerous details, including an “L” with a top serif.
I agree that this is Photo-Lettering’s Staudel Xenotype J (1962). The whole Roberta origin story is murky. I haven’t found a reliably dated source for it from before 1970.
Also, I haven’t seen full and dated glyph sets for either Staudel Xenotype J and Roberta III Initials by their respective original publishers. Mecanorma’s adapation of Roberta III is shown in a 1974 catalog with an L that does have a top serif. See this snippet from a post-1981 FotoStar catalog that shows this detail, too. In Staudel Xenotype J, B has a tear-shaped top counter. In Roberta III, this shape has a kink at the bottom right – which isn’t present in this application.