Typee

1950

Special Collections PS2384 T8 1950

London: Folio Society

John Buckland Wright was a Dunedin-born artist who moved to Europe and became one of the best engravers of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. He occasionally applied his skills to book cover designs. This post-war Folio Society edition of Herman Melville’s Typee has thin board covers with printed cloth carrying tropical fruit and ferns; a delicate JBW design. Rather than use a binder’s label, the binding details are found on the verso of the title-page: ‘Binding executed by Henry Stevenson & Co’, who were brothers Robert and Henry Stevenson, who established their own binding firm about 1868.