“We look to books not only for stimulation but for reassurance. There is no mention in ‘By Its Cover’ of Edward Gorey and the quiet, hand-lettered, crosshatchy covers he executed in the fifties for Doubleday Anchor books, but they spoke reassuringly, in the fledgling days of the paperback revolution, of dependability. A wealth of previously hard-to-find treasures, from Melville’s ‘Redburn’ and Gogol’s tales to Kierkegaard’s ‘Fear and Trembling’ and Stendhal’s long essay on love, were poured into the same staid yet impish mold, the Gorey style of cover.”
John Updike, “Deceptively Conceptual: Books and Their Covers”
(Almost a year ago, I thrilled to find a cache of Gorey-illustrated Anchors and Vintages at my local used bookstore.)