Exile Authors on George Salter’s Book Jackets

For forty years, George Salter’s beautifully drawn and lettered jackets served as elegant windows into the works of such renowned authors as Albert Camus, John Dos Passos, Jack London, and Thomas Mann. Salter had the rare ability to reduce the illustrated jacket to its essential elements. Using typography, calligraphy, and pictorial imagery, he evoked the contents of a wide variety of books.

Salter’s life and work bridged two continents and cultures and spanned the political turmoil of the mid-twentieth century. He survived both world wars, the rise of National Socialism in Germany, an permanent exile in a new land, but nothing halted his tireless and brilliant design work.

The following selection from Thomas Hansen’s new book presents Salter’s artistic efforts in behalf of fellow exiles in the United States. Thomas S. Hansen, George Salter: Classic Book Jackets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.

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