Front to Back: Making History

Part I of a series spotlighting wraparound paperback art.

The Hell-Fire Club, by Daniel P. Mannix (Ballantine, 1969).
Cover illustration by Shannon Stirnweis.

Book covers are such confined surfaces on which to work, it’s no wonder artists sometimes try to continue their creativity across the spine and onto the back, too. Although there are exceptions, this was really more a practice of the past than the present, since today’s jackets are designed for easy, clear shrinkage into JPEG images. As a result, those classic wraparound fronts are even more admired now than they were previously.

If you think about it, extending artwork from the front of a book to its rear was pretty hard to justify. After all, most readers only ever pay much attention to the side where the title and author credits appear. So commissioning a wider painting (or, later, a wide-angle photograph) may not have been money well spent. But it certainly had the potential to give a book—whether issued in hardcover or paperback—some additional distinction.

Over the last decade, I’ve quietly built up computer files filled with these wraparound covers, and have learned several things about them. While it seems every field of fiction has spawned such fronts, the greatest number—by far—have come from the science fiction/fantasy genre. Not all well-known book artists have had equal opportunity to lend their talents to this field, but some familiar names pop up frequently; indeed, a few painters (Ian Miller, Richard Powers, and Tom Adams among them) have made part of their reputations with memorable crossover art of this sort.

There are scans of more than 100 wraparound covers stored on my hard drive (which is probably a modest sampling of the total in existence). To share the lot with you, I’ve divided them according to genre and then grouped titles by the same wordsmiths. I shall roll out those beauties over the next month or so, in irregular posts—beginning today with a gallery of historical novels.

The covers below, mostly from paperbacks, feature art by John Richards (The Golden Exile, Bridal Journey), Art Sussman (Sword in His Hand), John Floherty Jr. (Seminole, Beautiful Humbug), Barye Phillips (Trek East), Shannon Stirnweis (The Sea Witch), Tom Adams (The Rich Are With You Always), James Bama (The Admiral), Robert McGinnis (The Journeyer), and Charles Gehm (Gentlemen of Adventure). Other illustrators are unidentified.

Click on any of the images below to open an enlargement.

As we go along through this series, please let me know if there are any wraparound fronts that should be added to the collections.

FOLLOW-UP: In the early weeks of 2023, I came upon a couple more examples of historical-fiction wraparounds that I just couldn’t ignore. Forbidden City (Fawcett Crest, 1978) and My Enemy the Queen (Fawcett Crest, 1979) both carry artwork by Ted CoConis.