1965 reprint, cover drawing by Virgil Burnett — American artist who moved to Paris in the Sixties and lived off Penguin covers. Later they moved him on to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fr. Rolfe, François Mauriac and a lot of Daphne du Maurier (The Birds is good); this seems to have been his first, though. He seems a neat choice for Beckett: the Parisian connection, the assonance of the surnames, and the first name taken from Dante's guide to the underworld.
Next iteration:
1974 reprint: "The cover shows 'Skull 1923' by Alberto Giacometti by kind permission of Sir Robert Sainsbury (photo Rodney Todd-White)."
With Penguin Modern Classics the connection between cover art and text can sometimes seem obscure to the point of arbitrariness, but Giacometti is almost blindingly obvious: he and Beckett were friends from the 1930s until the artist's death in 1966, and collaborated on a revival of Waiting for Godot in 1961.
I do admire the modern Faber Becketts, in their specially commissioned typeface.
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