We had a call last week from a charming gentleman who wanted to buy all the editions we had of Nevil Shute books with jacket art by CWB. We chatted a bit and he said that CWB was in fact his father and his copies had been lost somewhere along the line and he wanted replacements. His father was paid eight guineas for each of the jacket designs – a fair amount of money in the 1950s when they were published – but he received nothing for subsequent print runs – of which, being Nevil Shute,
there were plenty. Anyway I did a bit of research on CWB – whose full name was C.W. Bacon - his modus-operandi behind designing a jacket was to keep any personal reflection of the story out of the equation and so his designs were merely an illustration of the subject matter – the Shute ones are all in pen and ink. I think they are stylish and rather lovely in their simplicity. Don't you?
