Bloomsday

Continuing the theme of last year’s Bloomsday post...  I’m always on the lookout for interesting and unusual cover designs for Ulysses, and I very much like Kirsty White’s cover for Penguin’s 2011 Annotated Student edition. Pictorial views of Dublin in the early 20th century are de rigueur for art directors tasked with presenting Joyce’s masterwork but it’s nice to see an artist given the opportunity to present original work. I haven't seen a cover this striking since Richard Hamilton’s 1985 etching The Transmogrifications of Bloom, used on various editions of the Oxford World Classics series, and I particularly like that the artist has included little references to the book within the drawing - thoughtfully color-coded for the reader to puzzle over. And the framing device of the drawing, a faux supplement of the Freeman's Journal newspaper (where Leopold Bloom sells advertising space), is rather ingenious too, in fact I initially assumed the design was adapted from an actual illustration from that paper. (Click here for a large scan of the cover)