Monday, June 7, 2010

Cover Story: My Theodosia

From time to time we like to blog about book covers. Some times they are really pretty, some times not. Some times the art is standard for a particular collection, other times is follows a trend (remember all those headless women that abound in HF covers nowadays).

Fellow historical fiction reader Misfit helped us in finding some old cover art for several of Anya Seton's books. It's always great fun to see how the covers reflect the story, or not, and how they have evolved through time.
Today we start by posting the covers for My Theodosia, the book that we reviewed yesterday.

True to the novel's main character all the covers feature young ladies. Some look more like romance than historical fiction but I guess this being a romanticised version of Theodosia's life it's not totally off mark.
The 5th cover, and more recent, is a portrait of Theodosia, painted by John Vanderlyn, and is the one that we would easily identify with an historical fiction book. However I find that my favourite is the 2nd cover, with a ship in the background. It's the one I've read but it's also the most evocative of the story, you'll just have to read it to find out why.

We also decided to include some international covers of My Theodosia, like the very feminine La Belle de Richmond, the French version from 1980, and also the Turkish one from a more recent release.

Which one is your favourite?

3 comments:

  1. Even though I'm normally partial to covers like 5, numbers 3 and 4 really tickle me. They remind me of the kind of books I'd read in middle school and high school -- they had that promise of tawdriness with a fringe of history. I swear I've even seen 4 in person -- used bookstore, maybe?

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  2. Cool post! I like #3, for the same reason Audra cited. It reminds of the books I read growing up.

    So does "My Theodosia" have anything in it about her supposed romance with Meriwether Lewis. Lewis is the main character in my two novels, and I've run across this rumored romance several times. Most historians don't think the time period works out, but what a couple they would have been. The tabloids could have had a field day with "Theowether" or "Meridosia." Ha!

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  3. Oh yes, her romance with Meriweather Lewis is part of this story. I was quite surprise when I went browsing the web for information about him and found that most sites mention that this was just fantasy...

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