Let's look at more Wimsey book covers!
Clouds of Witness (1926)
Clouds of Witness doesn't have any really striking or recognizable images in the premise to work with; several of these covers have the theme of "bejeweled kitty" running through them, when they're not just depicting corpses sprawled over things. Which, you know, is all right when it's all right, but...maybe I just don't like having it made so obvious that, like most other people who read these books, I love kitties and corpses, and the publishers totally know that.
(as before, all descriptions apply to the image preceding them)
This is the copy of Clouds of Witness which I own. (Not my photograph, though.) It's really beautiful in person; slender, hardcover with shiny gold lettering and beautifully spare. The "best mysteries of all time" thing at the top is a little unsightly, but bearable.
This is actually one of my absolute favorite LPW covers. Another of the black and white introduction-by-Elizabeth-George editions, its lines are so clean and its contrasts so stark that I feel like if I owned it and could be seen reading it, I would at last be a Real Adult. (I kinda wish the girl was supposed to be Harriet instead of...Mary I suppose it must be, or the sexy-Frenchwoman-lady, but - no wait if it's Mary then why does she have dark hair, is Mary supposed to have dark hair I can't remember, why would she if Peter is blonder than the California sun)
I can't get a larger image, but I had to include this. It's an audiobook cover, so perhaps it oughtn't to count, but...it's, like, a tiny tiny gun laid on a tiny tiny splash of blood on a monocle. Either that or an enormous monocle with a normal-sized gun and blood splatter. RAD.
Another audiobook. Um. Okay, for the sake of Justice I did not trust my faulty memory and actually found my copy of CoW and reread the part where Lord Peter falls into a bog. But you know what? My memory did not fail me. Absolutely nowhere in that passage does it say either that an impossibly tiny Bunter was trying to save Lord Peter by holding a twig in his general direction or that the bog was in fact a horrible, oozing pit of oversized intestines.
This thing, however, is awesome. I love the dramatic colors and the gnarly tree and the misty, sinister cat.
I think this one is Portugese or something. I adore it. Observe the kitty, the odd red-orange oval (eye?), the magic wand spraying candy and confetti, and the floating head of Mary who is now a ginger. Why is she a ginger? The world may never know.
This is pretty much exactly the state I plan to be found in when I am dead. Minus the gross maroonish-purple background.
Kitteh!
Identical kitteh. With bizarre twig-forest in the background.
I think these editions must have come out post-you and Petherbridge. They basically all have LPW on the cover and usually that LPW looks like Mr Peth.
Usually.
would you like some murky with that order of dim
Isn't this peaceful? I feel soothed.
Oh and I must not forget there's this. There are a number of Wimsey books done in this style, and I have never ever ever seen a good picture of one. The only pictures are all either tiny or blurry and tiny. This is a shame, as most of them look like they might be handsome if one could actually see the stupid things.
dear sweet heavenly mercy tell me that is not supposed to be lord peter
LATER UPDATE (3/15/11):
Whoa hey I forgot this one. Seriously go look at it. Look at her slippers. Dude.
EVEN LATER UPDATE (7/12/11):
Is....is this real life? Is this an actual thing?
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