Subject: (urth) Re: Pennington covers

From: Tony Ellis <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 17:08:42 +0000

07/05/98
                                                                      17:27
 RE>Pennington covers

alga wrote:
>What about -Urth-? That had a plain
>brown cover here (Hartwell, and with him Wolfe, having changed houses), but
>I would assume they all came out from one house in the UK and would have
>matching covers. 

I wish. Sadly by the time Urth came out here it was with a non-
Pennington - and quite naff - cover. 

>I would love to see even a part of an artist's conception
>of that ship sailing the stars!

You and me both. Severian looks nothing like you would imagine, and
the "ship" is a normal sailing ship hanging in mid-air behind him! It looks
as ridiculous as it sounds.

Back when TBOTNS first came out Arrow re-released a number of older
Wolfe books, such as Cerberus, The Devil in a Forest, and The Death
of Doctor Island and Other Stories and Other Stories, and they all
had Pennington covers. They aren't as good as the New Sun ones, but
they still have that certain something. That Urth came out without a 
Pennington cover is one of the crowning injustices of life.

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: Gordon Brain <gobrain at netcomuk.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 09 May 1998 12:22:22 +0000

I was interested to read the recent correspondence about cover art. I too
have always liked the Bruce Pennington covers for TBOTNS – to my mind they
seem to capture the atmosphere of the books.

Mr. Wolfe himself once told me that he considered the Pennington cover for
Shadow to be "the finest jacket art I've ever had".

Indeed, that particular cover even inspired a passage in TUOTNS. In Chapter
XXVI 'Gunnie And Burgundofora', Severian recalls himself as a young
journeyman, "striding along, his fuligin cloak billowing behind him and the
dark cross of Terminus Est rising above his left shoulder". Mr. Wolfe
confirmed that he had the image from the Pennington cover in mind when
writing that passage.

These illustrations and others can be found in 'Ultraterranium, the
Paintings Of Bruce Pennington' (Paper Tiger 1991).

Gordon