Welcome to my blog, featuring various pieces from my collection of Oz books, artwork and memorabilia!

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Some Roycraft

Recently I've been adding some later reprints of Oz titles to my collection. These are copies from the 1950s and '60s that were produced by the publishers Reilly & Lee with new cover designs, in hopes of appealing to a new generation of Oz readers.

The three that I'm showing here have covers designed by Roland Roycraft, in a very slapdash cartoon style. They're bright and colorful, and would certainly catch the eye on display in a bookshop. I find them amusing, as the covers have nothing to do with the style of the interior artwork!

Mr Roycraft was an artist with a variety of talents. He spent his later years living in Michigan, teaching watercolor techniques, as well as creating instructional videos and a book. Examples of his work can be seen here on his website. His watercolor work is quite different from this early commercial Oz work!

4 comments:

Mike said...

While I personally don't much like these illustrations, I can appreciate the publisher's motive. I know that the covers of the Del Rey paperbacks in the 80s were a huge factor in my wanting to read the series.

Bill Campbell said...

I was never much of a fan of these either, but I have come to enjoy them as somewhat unusual variants of the Oz books. And they do have a charm of their own, though I do prefer Neill's imagery!

Bell-Snickle said...

I actually love these covers as an alternate take on Oz. Wish they'd had him do the interiors as well. It's a bit jarring to go from the cartoon style cover to Neill's fine line interiors.

Douglas McEwan said...

These covers are awful, not a patch on Neill's great covers. I do like the Del Ray covers, which are at least based on Neill's illustrations, but these books do not need new covers.