While I was sitting watching Dancing with the Stars tonight, an email came in from my dad, who alerted me to an eBay seller's historical fiction listings. His name looked familiar, so I checked around and remembered I used to get his catalogs when I was in high school and undergrad (Pandora's Books). They were large format, newspaper style, very tiny print.Anyway, take a look at the listings if you want to see many more examples of 1950s-70s style historical novel covers, such as the one on the left. I own many of the books in other editions, so I'm not really tempted to bid, but it looks like everything starts at 99 cents if you're so inclined.
Oh, there's some beauts there! Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteI won the one I bid on--a Jan Westcott with a very tacky cover. Only 99 cents!
ReplyDeleteVery nice - hope we'll see the cover at some point!
ReplyDeleteI just bought the first two books of a Roberta Gellis's series (Alinor and Roselynde) as I read that they were must reads for historical novel fans and in particular are set in one of my favourite periods. As they are out of print I bought them second hand on the internet and the covers are brilliant. I sort of knew what to expect but the bodice ripping picture (literally) cover of Alinor is fantatsic. When my partner saw them he thought I had resorted to Mills and Boon in my reading and was not entirely convinced they were the serious historical fiction I usually read. The same goes for the Edith Pargeter's Heaven Tree Trilogy. You have go to love them and have them for the covers alon :-)
ReplyDeleteI don't think I ever owned the original editions of the Roselynde series, but I had some 1980s paperbacks that were rather colorful, though not of bodice-ripping quality. The covers all centered on a woman, with some vague medieval scenes in the background. But I just checked Amazon and they appear to have the original covers scanned in there. I swear the guy on the cover of Alinor looks like Fabio! (And the backdrop resembles India or Hawaii or some other tropical island rather than England...)
ReplyDeleteI have never seen the Heaven Tree trilogy with a garish cover like that. How inappropriate!