If you’re into vin­tage paper­backs with illus­trated and often hand let­tered covers – and you don’t mind some trash and lewd­ness – have a look at this fan­tas­tic gallery of Ember Library paper­back cover art. Pub­lished between Octo­ber 8, 1965 – Our Man From Sadisto, the first title pub­lished in the famed 0008 series – and Sep­tem­ber 15, 1967 – The Pas­sion­ate Pio­neer –, almost all of the books fea­tured work by Amer­i­can illus­tra­tor Robert Bon­fils (he did 93 of the 96 titles).

Having started his illus­tra­tion career in Chicago in the mid 1950s, Robert Bon­fils was hired in the early six­ties by Ham­ling Orga­ni­za­tion as art direc­tor. He pro­duced paper­back book covers exclu­sively for a vari­ety of imprints within the Ham­ling group, such as Nigh­stand Books, Leisure Books, Adult Books, Candid Read­ers and Com­pan­ion Books and others, com­monly known today as Green­leaf Classics.

As cover art on Green­leaf Books was never signed and no records were kept, it was only in the mid eight­ies, when infor­ma­tion sur­faced among spe­cialty book col­lec­tors, that Robert Bon­fils was iden­ti­fied as being the artist of the book covers. This is why it is not known how many covers he did for this com­pany, but esti­mates run up to at least 1,000 covers. Most of the orig­i­nal art for the Green­leaf covers has mostly been lost, although a few pieces have survived.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est for ama­teurs of typog­ra­phy and let­ter­ing are the titles on the paper­back covers. While a few fea­ture the usual sus­pects – Trade Gothic, Franklin Gothic, Melior, Book­man, Chel­tenham, Cen­tury, Bodoni, Stymie et al – gor­geous hand let­ter­ing graces almost two thirds of those covers. There’s a great vari­ety of styles at play, from chill­ing terror type over casual brush let­ter­ing and poppy sans caps to intri­cate vignettes. These exam­ples have Rian Hughes, Jason Wal­cott and House Indus­tries writ­ten all over it, three of the most fer­vent archae­ol­o­gists of pop­u­lar cul­ture, and this gallery is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to dis­cover some of their influences.

See the gallery of Ember Library paper­back cover art here.

Via Coudal Fresh Signals