Here is another celebration of the art that adorns the covers of some of my favourite books.

Because the covers are lovely, but the paintings really come alive when they are released from their green frames. Sometimes just a detail has been chosen, or the painting has been cropped because it wasn’t book-shaped. That may be the best way to make a good cover for a book, but it shouldn’t be the only way we see the art-work.

Autumn has flown, but there is still time to look around the exhibits before this exhibition closes and the exhibits for the Christmas show are hung.

The colours of this season’s paintings really seem to sing when they are released from their green frames.

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What a difference when you see the whole painting!

Donna Sol Balcone by Ubaldo Oppi

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‘The Diviners’ by Margaret Laurence (#323)

‘Morag Dunn, now in her mid-forties, lives in a riverside farmhouse in Eastern Ontario. Through a series of flashbacks she looks at the painful and exhilarating moments of her earlier life: her childhood on the social margins of the small prairie town of Manawaka; her relationship with Jules Tonnerre which grows out of their shared alienation; her demeaning marriage and her escape from it into writing fiction, and her travels to England and Scotland and, finally, back to rural Canada, where she faces a different challenge – the necessity to understand, and let go of, the daughter she loves.’

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Why Virago turned this painting black and white I shall never understand

‘Portrait of a Midinette’ by Herbert James Gunn

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‘Good Daughters’ by Mary Hocking (#340)

‘Mary Hocking brings good humour and sympathy to her depiction of the Fairley sisters growing up in their close-knit West London neighbourhood before, during and after the war. Here, in the first novel of a trilogy, the girls are sheltered in a world whose traditions of hard work and frugality are upheld in their Methodist father, Stanley, and their strong quiet mother, Judith. But as love comes to Louise and adventures tempt Alice and her friend, unease lurks and terrible rumours travel from Germany – auguries of the catastrophe to come.’

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An intriguing match of book and artwork

‘Hector and Andromache’ by Giorgio di Chirico

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‘Life Before Man’ by Margaret Atwood (#68)

‘Life Before Man chronicles with ironic precision, in masterful prose, the tragicomedy we call love between the sexes. Elizabeth – monstrous yet pitiable, Nate her husband – a patchwork man, gentle, disillusioned, and Leslie his lover, a young woman prehistoric in her simplicity, form a sexual triangle whose encounter illuminate profound truths about contemporary experience.’

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The author and the artist were worlds apart

‘Room in Brooklyn’ by Edward Hopper

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‘None Turn Back’ by Storm Jameson (#132)

‘It is 6th May, the third day of the General Strike … This is the story of that harrowing week seen through the eyes of the women and men of London as they move through that unreal city. We meet those who gave their all for the strike -and a vision of a better world. We meet, too, those who fought to break it with every weapon they had: power, politics, money – or brute force. There are masters and workmen, fascists and communists, politicians and trade unionists, wives and mistresses, artists, writers and scientists, all caught up in the web of each other’s lives. But above all we follow the thread of Hervey Russell’s life as she is swept up by the political ferment around her, by the difficulties of a new marriage, and by her hopes and fears for the future… ‘

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I wish the book was as famous as the artist

‘Regina Cordium’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

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‘Red Pottage’ by Mary Cholmondeley (#187)

‘Rachel West and Hester Gresley have been friends since nursery days. Rachel, calm and practical, inherits a fortune after years of poverty in the East End of London but falls in love with a philanderer. Hester, imaginative and excitable, has published a successful novel, but her aunt’s death forces her to live in the stifling atmosphere of her clergyman brother’s house. This absorbing novel, first published in 1899, explores the ways in which two very different women search for fulfilment in a society bound by convention.’

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Such a different impression when you see the whole painting

‘Interior’ by Duncan Grant

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‘Rhapsody’ by Dorothy Edwards (#204)

‘Set in the leisurely world of country houses, rambling walks, afternoon teas and piano duets, these deceptively simple tales are of women and men who come together, sometimes ludicrously, often sadly – if at all. They tell of unrequited love and jealousy, of the separateness of one human being from another, all enacted beneath the smooth veneer of English life at its most civilized. The theme of music weaves in and out of this volume of enchanting stories, first published in 1927. Reminiscent of Katherine Mansfield in mood and texture, they are nevertheless the work of an absolutely individual talent.’

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I’m reading another book by this author and I’d love to find a copy of this one

‘At the Window’ by Patricia O’Brien

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‘Nobody’s Business’ by Penelope Gilliatt (#334)

‘An elderly writer of popular comedies and her liberal husband, a judge, are accosted in mid-swim by three crass archivists. In distracting their inquisitors, the couple show the greatest mannerliness while treading water. A famous cellist develops an unruly attachment to his bed. His accompanist suggests an analyst, but takes the sessions himself, lending a fond angle to the transference. A quiet, wise man watches his blustering City stepson take over his house and his being and has not the heart to see his usurping heir’s action as the pattern of push and shove. With assurance, acuity and her lucid wit, Penelope Gilliatt lays bare the non-utterances that are the crucial ellipses of the human temperament. Candid, resonant and always compassionate, these are unforgettable tales from a genius of the short story.’

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That’s the last painting in this collection, but there will be a winter exhibition opening early next year, and a spring show after that ….

And in the meantime, do tell me if you have any particular favourite cover artwork, or any suggestions for future exhibitions.

‘November is the pearl-grey month, the changeling between warm crimson October and cold white December; the month when the leaves fall in slow drifting whirls and the shapes of the trees are revealed. When the earth imperceptibly wakes and stretches her bare limbs and displays her stubborn unconquerable strength before she settles uneasily into winter. November is secret and silent.’

Alison Uttley

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‘November Window, Reflecting’ by Victoria Crowe

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It was a sort of trick of the season, perhaps, that moment in November, and of the time of day, shortly before dusk. An effect of the particular atmosphere that day in late autumn, after an afternoon of intermittent drizzle—an array of colours so rich it was as if the whole mountain were dreaming them, colours so beautiful they made us afraid at the thought that we were going to climb up there, up the side of the mountain. Thirteen years have passed since then, yet the touching beauty of those leaves, on all the different trees, rises up before me as if I were there at this moment.

From The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue

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‘Old Essex in November’ by Sir George Clausen

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An hour’s complete leisure for such reflections as these, on a dark November day, a small thick rain almost blotting out the very few objects ever to be discerned from the windows, was enough to make the sound of Lady Russell’s carriage exceedingly welcome; and yet, though desirous to be gone, she could not quit the Mansion House, or look an adieu to the Cottage, with its black, dripping and comfortless veranda, or even notice through the misty glasses the last humble tenements of the village, without a saddened heart. Scenes had passed in Uppercross which made it precious. It stood the record of many sensations of pain, once severe, but now softened; and of some instances of relenting feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear. She left it all behind her, all but the recollection that such things had been.

From ‘Persuasion’ by Jane Austen

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From ‘Twelve Months Of Fruits’ by Robert Furber (c1674-1756)

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Listen.
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d,
Break from the trees
And fall.

‘November Night’ by Adelaide Crapsey

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‘Lighting a Firework’ by Charles Hewitt (1952)

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When the grey November weather came, and hung its soft dark clouds low and unbroken over the brown of the ploughed fields and the vivid emerald of the stretches of winter corn, the heavy stillness weighed my heart down to a forlorn yearning after the pleasant things of childhood, the petting, the comforting, the warming faith in the unfailing wisdom of the elders. A great need of something to lean on, and a great weariness of independence and responsibility took possession of my soul; and looking round for support and comfort in that transitory mood, the emptiness of the present and the blankness of the future sent me back to the past with all its ghosts.

From ‘Elizabeth and her German Garden’ by Elizabeth Von Arnim

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‘November’ by Benjamin William Leader

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There is a wind where the rose was,
Cold rain where sweet grass was,
And clouds like sheep
Stream o’er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.

Nought warm where your hand was,
Nought gold where your hair was,
But phantom, forlorn,
Beneath the thorn,
Your ghost where your face was.

Cold wind where your voice was,
Tears, tears where my heart was,
And ever with me,
Child, ever with me,
Silence where hope was.

‘Autumn/November’ by Walter de la Mare

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Spiced Mocha Biscotti with Walnuts and Brazil Nuts

Take:

85g unsalted butter
125g golden caster sugar
2 eggs beaten
250g buckwheat flour or plain flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp. cocoa powder
3 tbsp. coffee beans (or 2 tsp instant)
seeds from 3 star anise
1 tsp ground cinnamon or half a cinnamon stick
4 cloves (or 1/2 tsp ground cloves)
60g chocolate chips
60g chopped walnuts
40g chopped brazil nuts

Preheat the oven to 180c.

• With a pestle and mortar, grind the coffee beans, anise seeds, cloves, cinnamon, then add the flour and baking powder together and add the cocoa and ground coffee/spices and set aside.
• In a bowl, add the butter and sugar and beat together until creamy, then add the beaten eggs and beat in, finally add the dry ingredients and the nuts and chocolate chips.
• Mix together well then line a cookie tray with baking paper and tip out the dough in a line and with floured hands make into a log shape. flatten it slightly then bake for 35 minutes.
• Then remove from oven and turn it down to 170c and slice with a sharp knife at a slight angle and lay each slice flat and bake again for another 15 minutes until crisp.
• Leave plain or drizzle with melted chocolate.

From Twigg Studios

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‘November’ by Koloman Moser

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Nature, who has played so many queer tricks upon us, making us so unequally of clay and diamonds, of rainbow and granite, and stuffed them into a case, often of the most incongruous, for the poet has a butcher’s face and the butcher a poet’s; nature, who delights in muddle and mystery, so that even now (the first of November, 1927) we know not why we go upstairs, or why we come down again, our most daily movements are like the passage of a ship on an unknown sea, and the sailors at the mast-head ask, pointing their glasses to the horizon: Is there land or is there none? to which, if we are prophets, we make answer “Yes”; if we are truthful we say “No”; nature, who has so much to answer for besides the perhaps unwieldy length of this sentence, has further complicated her task and added to our confusion by providing not only a perfect ragbag of odds and ends within us—a piece of a policeman’s trousers lying cheek by jowl with Queen Alexandra’s wedding veil—but has contrived that the whole assortment shall be lightly stitched together by a single thread. Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind. Instead of being a single, downright, bluff piece of work of which no man need feel ashamed, our commonest deeds are set about with a fluttering and flickering of wings, a rising and falling of lights

From ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf

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‘Ducks and Willows. Attenborough Reserve, November 2013’ by Kurt Jackson

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The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It’s a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you’ve got in as many supplies as you can. It’s nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their way up the walls looking for a way in, but they won’t find one, everything is shut, and you sit inside, laughing in your warmth and your solitude, for you have had foresight.

From ‘Moominvalley in November’ by Tove Jansson

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