todayspenguinsscatterkeir:

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Penguin 717, 1967 - Cover photographs by Alan Aldridge

These days it’s often hard to tell what year a Penguin was printed. Inside it will say something inscrutable like “First published 1994” and then “13 15 17 16 14 12” or something, the obscure number sequence giving an idea of whether it was reprinted later or earlier than another copy that has more of fewer numbers. It used to be so different. Not only did they used to say inside when they were printed, but there was a time when you could pretty much guess the year just from the design of the front cover. This was strongest in 1966, and I would have guessed this was 1966, but it’s 1967. Still, near enough! It may be the same as the previous impression, which was 1965. It has the large logo which ran in this form from 1965 to 1967, before the ‘panic top’ was introduced in the aftermath of Alan Aldridge’s departure, it has the price, in the final year in which they appeared on the front of British Penguins (barring the odd anomaly), and the photographic cover style with people which was a notable feature of this period, with mixed results. In this photograph, by Alan Aldridge himself, the people just don’t look like Lennie and George to me. They look like a couple of Cockneys dressed up. I wonder who they were, and how they came to be used for this? Were they models? Or a couple of guys Alan Aldridge met down the pub? If you have a lot of Penguins in a particular order on your shelves and you’re particularly anal this period will give you the shivers, and this book is typical with its blue, not orange, spine and its author’s name in upper case, typical of the anything goes spirit which ensured that Alan Aldridge’s days as art director were numbered.