Foreign affairs

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A Czech edition of Something from Below by ST Joshi, 2022.

A few of my illustrations and cover designs have been reprinted on foreign editions over the past couple of years so I thought I’d note them here. All the books are cosmic horror of one kind or another which isn’t too surprising when I’m known more for this than for my work in other genres. Seeing your cover art reused in other countries (or in your own country, for that matter) happens less often than you might think. The music business goes in the opposite direction in this regard. Books, for a variety of reasons, tend to be reprinted with new covers whereas album releases will sail through the years packaged in whatever cover they were fortunate (sometimes unfortunate) to have received when first released. Consequently, you can’t predict which design or illustration might end up being used for a reprint or a new edition.

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A Swedish edition of The Call of Cthulhu and other stories, 2022. The cover art is from the series of illustrations I produced for Lovecraft’s Monsters, a story collection edited by Ellen Datlow.

This list isn’t necessarily all that may be out there. Another peculiarity of the publishing world is that you can be told a foreign edition is being planned then, after various agreements have been made, never hear about it again. This is partly a result of the Babel-like nature of the internet, in which we navigate our own language zones while remaining ignorant of the other zones which exist close by. If nobody tells you the book was published then you’re unlikely to encounter it by accident. Publishing is also a slow business, so that you might agree to a reprint, send off the artwork then forget all about it until somebody contacts you a year later asking where they should send a complimentary copy. (And publishers don’t always send complimentary copies…) Missing from this list are a Russian edition of Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng, and a Chinese edition of The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. In both cases I sent the publishers the artwork and was paid a small fee as a result but I’ve yet to discover whether the books were published using my cover art, or even published at all.

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The above is a Turkish edition of The House on the Borderland published by the Karanlik Kitaplik imprint of Ithaki. The imprint title translates as “Dark Bookshelf” although “Dark Library” seems more likely, with the other books in the series being horror novels that feature similar cover designs using tinted monochrome artwork. My illustration is from the interior of the Swan River Press edition which I would, of course, recommend to all Anglophone readers. The Turkish publisher said they planned to reprint some of my other Hodgson illustrations inside their edition but I don’t know whether they’ve done this. Ithaki also have another edition of the novel which reuses the Ian Miller cover art from the old Panther paperback.

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French edition of The Last Ritual by SA Sidor, 2021.

Asmodee has tentacles in many countries so the spin-off books published by the company’s Aconyte imprint have generated a number of foreign editions, one of which has already been mentioned here. I’m pleased to see the reworked covers using fonts sympathetic to the Deco-style design. There are more books in this series (the most recent being The Ravening Deep) so there may be more foreign editions in the future.

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Italy, 2021.

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South Korea, 2022.

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Spain, 2022. This one comes with a postcard of the cover design.

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Spanish edition of Litany of Dreams by Ari Marmell, 2022.

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South Korea, 2022.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Das Letzte Ritual
Litany of Dreams
The Last Ritual
Something from Below
Lovecraft’s Monsters

Litany of Dreams

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One of the covers I was working on during the summer months was revealed this week so here it is. Litany of Dreams by Ari Marmell is another title from games-related imprint Aconyte, and a further addition to their Lovecraft-related Arkham Horror series of games and novels:

The mysterious disappearance of a gifted student at Miskatonic University spurs his troubled roommate, Elliott Raslo, into an investigation of his own. But Elliott already struggles against the maddening allure of a ceaseless chant that only he can hear… When Elliott’s search converges with that of a Greenland Inuk’s hunt for a stolen relic, they are left with yet more questions. Could there be a connection between Elliott’s litany and the broken stone stele covered in antediluvian writings that had obsessed his friend? Learning the answers will draw them into the heart of a devilish plot to rebirth an ancient horror.

The new cover follows the form of The Last Ritual with an Art Deco style and a similar arrangement of triangular panels with an architectural focus. The building is Lovecraft’s Miskatonic University, and this is the first time I’ve attempted a proper depiction of the place. A couple of the panels in my unfinished adaptation of The Dunwich Horror showed Wilbur Whateley entering the university but the buildings there owed more to Manchester University’s Gothic facades with a pair of gateposts borrowed from Brown University in Providence. The building here is a better match, a typical Ivy League structure with added spikes. The latter are an unusual feature given the generally conservative appearance of these places but still a long way from the eccentricities of Gavin Stamp’s depictions in the George Hay Necronomicon. The faces in the corners of the cover design are based on tupilak figures carved from antlers or whale teeth by the Inuit of Greenland, figures which feature in the story.

Litany of Dreams will be published on April 6, 2021.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The Lovecraft archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
The Last Ritual