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Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, first edition

Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Aug 17th, 2015. Artwork published in .
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, first edition 1
Source: www.manhattanrarebooks.com License: All Rights Reserved.

There isn’t any type on the front and spine of the jacket for John Steinbeck’s novella, and yet it qualifies for the inclusion on Fonts In Use: the freely-drawn caps are clearly based on Cartoon. This caps-only typeface, a design by Howard Trafton, was first cast by Bauer in 1936 – just one year before the book was released. Apart from the fact that repeating letters are not identical, the only real departure from the model is the M and how the center strokes meet – it’s almost like an upside-down W, but not quite.

For the text on the back and the inner flaps, Memphis was paired with the bold display face known as Titanic or Hercules. Its jolly A and M make me think of Robert Crumb’s Keep on Truckin’ cartoon.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, first edition 2
License: All Rights Reserved.
Printed in the United States of America by J.J. Little and Ives Company, New York. Robert Josephy is credited as the designer. It is unclear whether he is responsible for the interior only, or also for the jacket.
License: All Rights Reserved.

Printed in the United States of America by J.J. Little and Ives Company, New York. Robert Josephy is credited as the designer. It is unclear whether he is responsible for the interior only, or also for the jacket.

Facsimile dust jacket
Source: www.facsimiledustjackets.com Facsimile Dust Jackets, LLC. License: All Rights Reserved.

Facsimile dust jacket

Glyph set of Cartoon Bold
Source: www.flickr.com Detail of a scan by James Puckett. License: CC BY.

Glyph set of Cartoon Bold

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, first edition 6
Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, first edition 7
Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, first edition 8
Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.

Typefaces

  • Cartoon
  • Titanic
  • Memphis
  • Janson Text

Formats

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Designers/Agencies

Artwork location

3 Comments on “Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, first edition”

  1. What’s the body text for the book?

  2. Hello Michael, do you have a good image of the book’s interior?

    The italic used for “All rights reserved” etc. with the single-storey g might be Linotype Old Style No. 1. The title page appears to be in Janson.

  3. Michael, it’s been a while. The Internet Archive has a scanned copy of this edition. I have just added three images showing the interior typography to the post. The text typeface is indeed Linotype Janson, made in 1932 under the direction of C.H. Griffith.

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