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Vintage to publish new editions of Ian McEwan’s backlist
Vintage has announced plans to publish 18 new editions of award-winning author Ian McEwan’s backlist this year, with the first tranche going on sale on 8th June.
The series will feature new cover designs by Vintage’s creative director Suzanne Dean at Vintage, who is shortlisted for Designer of the Year at this year’s British Book Awards.
Employing a mixture of colour and black and white photography, alongside a range of newly commissioned illustrations, the series aims to introduce McEwan’s books to a new generation of readers. Vintage will be supporting the reissues with a range of activity, including influencer mailings and social media coverage.
Dean said: “When creating a series design, a designer needs to treat each title individually while considering how all the covers cohere. The ‘grid’ for McEwan’s new series look, adapted from my hardback design of Lessons, allowed me the freedom to choose close-ups images on some titles and distant scenes on others. Variety not only in media, but also scale, lent a visual excitement when seen across the collection. It was a sheer joy to match artists with titles, to discuss an approach with the illustrator and see the final image sit beautifully alongside the other books.
“It is hard to choose favourites, but I think the silk screen print by Kate Gibb on Enduring Love is the best illustration of a hot air balloon I have ever seen. The Kodachrome photograph sourced from The Anonymous Project Collection really captures a poignant sense of time and place for On Chesil Beach. The illustration for The Cement Garden by Tina Berning deliciously evokes the dark subject matter and arid summer heat, and I particularly love how she composed and cropped one of the central characters (Julie), sunbathing among the concrete and odd straggly grass. Redesigning Ian McEwan’s celebrated series was a huge honour and I’m very excited to see the books in the wild this summer.”
McEwan said: “I was really impressed by these designs. The artful trick was to have different artists dream up such varied and striking images that cohere within a general scheme.”
Nick Skidmore, vintage publishing director, added: “With the remarkable publication of Lessons last year, and the forthcoming paperback this June, now felt like a particularly rich and exciting time to revisit and reimagine Ian McEwan’s previous work in a new livery. Taking her incredible Lessons jacket as the starting point, Suzanne Dean has created a brilliantly dynamic aesthetic that captures the individual artfulness of each of McEwan’s books. We’re excited to see these reissues out in the world, and guide new readers into some of the greatest storytelling and writing of the last 40 years.”
According to the publisher, Ian McEwan’s backlist, including the Lessons hardback, has sold over 5.5 million copies. His novels have been translated into 50 languages and published in over 50 countries.
