Charles Ricketts designed the binding for the works of W.B. Yeats, published in six volumes, 1922-1926. For the American editions an altered drawing was used in which various details were executed differently. [See my blog No. 174 (26 November 2014).]
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| W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies (London, 1926) |
Two years after Ricketts had died, an edition of The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats was published in New York (1933), followed a year later by the London edition, and the differences in execution now became substantial.
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| The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (London, 1933) |
The spine design was identical, but in colour the bindings were different and both deviated from the original design - Ricketts had chosen a gentle green. However, the London edition was issued in red-purple cloth, the New York edition in dark blue cloth.
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| The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (London, 1933): dustjacket |
The London edition retained from Ricketts's design only the spine section. Front and back cover were left blank. (Evidently, this was cheaper to produce.) The dust jacket, displaying the Macmillan monogram, mentioned the title.
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| The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York, 1933) |
However, the New York edition also reproduced the front cover design, blind-stamped on blue cloth. Ricketts himself would never have chosen this dark blue background (nor the dark green used for the American Yeats editions in the 1920s).
A light shade was needed to keep the blind-stamped design subtle but visible. The dark blue made it almost undetectable.
But the design had by then become the property of the publisher - and even if Ricketts had still been alive, he probably would not have protested against the later (lesser) versions of his design - if he had come across them in the first place.
