Close your eyes and imagine it is 1975 in Austin, Texas. You are doing research in the archives of the Harry Ransom Center here at the University of Texas at Austin. It is a quiet afternoon in the research library. You've just made a pot of tea. Outside, however, it seems like the world is burning. Protests of the Vietnam War have led to a painful withdrawal and a fracturing of American culture. You love Arthurian legend; the popular fantasy tale The Sword in the Stone published over thirty-five years ago. As a student of literature, you know that T.H. White wrote his famous fantasy series The Once and Future King in the 1930s and 1940s, weaving in anti-war references to reflect his views on the horrors of World War II.
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| An original illustration from The Book of Merlyn (1977) by Trevor Stubley |
The binding on your copy of The Once and Future King has seen better days and you frequently daydream about being tutored by Merlyn. You have pored over T.H. White's archived collection for weeks, seeking at the very least a research question, possibly a note shedding light on White's personal life. You find yourself listlessly sorting through the effects and notes of the dead English author, his writing life contained in some twenty-six document boxes, two of which are oversized. Your brain is starting to atrophy and you wish you could simply wave your magic wand to find that gem of literary history among all these manuscripts for articles, plays, poems, short stories, broadcasts. It would be nice to find something exciting among T.H. White's journals and notebooks, all his outgoing and incoming correspondence, the famous fantasy writer's personal documents. You imagine a dark and damp castle library. Archimedes sits perched in a corner illuminated by candlelight. Merlyn's pipe has filled the medieval library with smoke. Stacks of books and illuminated manuscripts sit piled upon a large wooden table with claw feet.
All of a sudden, a manuscript page catches your eye. The Book of Merlyn.
The Conclusion to The Once and Future King. It spent twenty-six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
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| 1977 edition of The Book of Merlyn |
“Arriving from beyond the curve of time and apparently from the grave, The Book of Merlyn stirs its own pages, saying, wait: you didn’t get the whole story. . . . It gives us a final glimpse of those two immortal characters, Wart and Merlyn, up close, slo-mo, with a considered and affectionate scrutiny. The book is an elegiac posting from a master storyteller of the twentieth century. Its reissue in our next century is just as welcome as when it first arrived forty years ago. . . . Certainly the moral questions about the military use of force perplex the world still. . . . The efficacy of treaties, the trading of insults among the potentates of the day, the testing of weapons, the weaponizing of trade—these strategies are still front and center. Rather terrifyingly so. We do well to revisit what that old schoolteacher of children, Merlyn, has been trying to point out to us about power and responsibility.”To celebrate the new edition of this book, we talked to book designer and illustrator Kimberly Glyder about the process of designing the new cover for The Book of Merlyn. The new version featuring a new foreword by Wicked author Gregory Maguire, publishes September 19, 2018.
Did you read any T.H. White growing up, and if so, how did this influence your design?
Kimberly Glyder: Unfortunately, I must admit, I hadn’t read any of T.H. White before working on this book! However, I was aware of the story of The Sword and the Stone and the fictional character of Merlyn.
How did the original interior illustrations inform your design?
KM: My art director, Dustin Kilgore, sent me the original book, so I was able to see the whole book before beginning my cover illustration. My goal was to update the current cover painting, while staying true to the brushwork/line work you see on the original book. I based the painting on multiple references (for the nose, for the hat, etc.) until I came up with a face that fit my concept of how Merlyn should look.
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| Paul Rand |
KM: After Dustin assigned me this title, I began looking around at other depictions of Merlyn, mostly to see what was out there and what I didn’t want to repeat. I wouldn’t say another book cover influenced me directly, but I was aware of the time period this was published in (1950s, though written earlier). Some of my favorite covers from this time period are those of Paul Rand who worked with limited color palettes and created designs which conveyed such beautiful, bold simplicity. I was aiming for something similar in my interpretation of this book. The hand lettered type references medieval type, but each individual character is unique.
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| Paul Rand |
What was it like working with UT Press?
KM: I’ve worked on several projects with UT Press now, a few covers and a full book (interior and cover) and each time the process has been great. I’m always been impressed by the design of UT Press books, which is one of the reasons I wanted to work for them!
What are some of the book covers that are most enduring to you?
KM: I have an emotional connection to book covers from childhood, such as the original covers of Catcher in the Rye, Nineteen Eighty-Four and many of the editions of To Kill a Mockingbird. I actually love redesigning classics when I’m lucky enough to get these assignments, because I know how meaningful these books are to people, especially kids. As for current books, I find that I gravitate to covers designed by Gabrielle Wilson, Jaya Miceli, and John Gall. They all seem to have a timeless quality to them, probably because they tend to set trends rather than follow them.
Check out all the iterations of Kimberly's design before the final version!
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