A little bit about...

The Blog

It is my intention that this blog will not only be a collection of images but a starting point for research into the work of the vast array of art directors, designers, illustrators and photographers that have contributed to the world of Pelican. There are plenty of resources on the web displaying the fantastic covers and I have provided links to any that I have found, but often there's not much information on the creators of those covers.

One of the joys of collecting is the detective work involved and until I bought Phil Baines' excellent Book; Penguin by Designers I had very little information on the history of Pelican books and their designs. 

Still I'm not tying to provide a Pelican History here, and most of the info presented I have gleaned from the books themselves. Ultimately I am trying to see if I can piece together a design story from researching what is printed on the Jackets, using this as a springboard to find out about some of the great names involved. Some Jackets do not give any design credits, but many do, and this is one of the things that I find most exciting about Pelican (and Penguin) books. Just like LP's, they are ephemera with clues.

...And finally, as I research I am finding that not only is there very little information available online, but that sadly a lot of the great names are no longer with us. I think it is about time that we all got acquainted with the people who, often anonymously, have created some of the most striking visual communication of the 20th century.

The Collection

My collection so far is of books that I have purchased in Melbourne, Australia, and then mainly in Op-shops (second hand/charity shops), so currently it is quite limited in scope –you might not see the best covers here, but I hope you will see what makes them so interesting to me. And it's a collection, so it's constantly evolving. There were thousands of Pelicans published, and many, many were republished, so it's pretty much endless. 

Why Pelican?

I first started collecting Pelican books purely for the subject matter: A short History of the World; The Greeks; The Status Seekers, Knuckle Sandwich etc. But I soon became fascinated by their covers, and then the names: Germano Facetti; Alan Aldridge; David Gentleman; Gerald Cinamon; John Sewell; Bruce Robertson, etc.... Who are they? what else did they do? I needed to know more. 

I became addicted to searching the Op-shop shelves and soon realised that most of the subject matter was interesting, and most of the covers were great. So inevitably a few little blue books gradually became a shelf full, then a wall...

There is very little information on the Internet about Pelican, but plenty on Penguin, which makes them all the more intriguing.