I am not sure at what point I figured out that John Leighton designed the main cover for London Society. It may have been after I purchased (on eBay) the copy of English Society that I have discussed in a few posts.
Anyway, below is an image of an early (September 1863) copy of London Society. You can see John Leighton’s “JL” monogram above the “I” in “Shilling.”
Below is a closer view:
Below is an image of a much later London Society cover. It is very similar to the one portrayed above, but by no means identical. This shows that a design can evolve somewhat in ways that may be beyond the control of the original designer. I’m not saying the later design is worse, but it certainly is not better.
The images above are from copies of the periodical that are in my collection.
The latest example of a London Society cover I have seen is that of the November 1897 issue — I found it on the Hathi Trust website. Here is a small portion (near the lower right-hand corner) of that cover, from the Hathi Trust website (digitized by Google from material at the University of Michigan):
That is quite different from the other covers portrayed. There are other differences as well.
—Tom Sawyer
Saturday, December 29, 2012
