Recovering the Classics

Seven artists design covers for their favorite books

Claude Closky

Lesley Dill

Arturo Herrera

Scott King

Tal R

Derek Sullivan

Sue Tompkins

Derek Sullivan
The Original of Laura or The Origin of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov (unpublished)

When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left clear instructions that any incomplete work of his was to be destroyed. This manuscript wasn’t, and it languished in a bank vault while Dmitri Nabokov, Nabokov’s son and literary executor, debated its fate. This past spring, Dmitri announced his decision to publish it.

The novel has alternately been referred to as The Original of Laura and The Origin of Laura, and Toronto-based artist Derek Sullivan includes this uncertainty in his typographic treatment of the title. His design is also, he says, “suggestive of continuity with the books published during [Nabokov’s] lifetime so that my cover would exist as a sort of decoy within Nabokov’s corpus of works.” Sullivan has never read the manuscript and is uncertain he will read the book when it comes out. “The book exists in my mind as a kind of extended promise, a secret thing outside the known books. I’m not sure I would want to spoil that.”