Between the Covers

Hardcover. Small quarto blank book. [107]pp., followed by a number of blank leaves, with a dos-a-dos last page advising the reader to begin the book from the other end. Moderate wear, very good. A droll commonplace book with hand-lettered title page, disclaimer, and dedication, utilizing newspaper clippings and typed and handwritten poems tipped-into the book and combined with 74 of the artist's own original drawings, mostly used to form collages. All but a few of the drawings have been tipped into the book, including an eight-part fold-out panel illustrating the "Cross-Section of a Young Wife's Life" (consisting mostly of drinking and exercising apparently). The drawings are largely satiric and include many amusing gems featuring old matrons, gaffers, clergymen, and a wide variety of over-imbibers, as well as puns aimed at ambiguous newspaper headlines and advertising tag-lines. The drawings range from basic pencil sketches to nicely heightened watercolor caricatures. Pares was a prolific artist with more than 500 dustjacket designs to her credit including the British first editions of *Good-bye, Mr. Chips!* and *Laura*. She is best known for her numerous notable covers for mystery writers such as E. Phillips Oppenheim and Manning Coles. Her appreciation of the British "characters" that she utilized so effectively on her jacket art is fully displayed here.

Item #372424