Posted by Tim Johns on December 18, 1997 at 11:26:18:
In Reply to: did AR ever use a jacket picture on his books? posted by Bill Wright on December 17, 1997 at 22:33:56:
As far as the original hardback editions of the books are concerned, I think Bill's first guess is correct: when they came out it was unusual to include a picture of the author on the cover: as a reader of childrens' literature in the 1940's I had no idea of what any of the authors looked like. As far as I can remember the first photograph of AR I saw appeared in the Radio Times to accompany the announcement of a talk on fishing.
During the 1950's Penguin books adopted the policy of putting pictures of authors on the covers of their paperbacks, so it was natural that the Puffin reprints should have included a photo of AR. Evgenia was closely involved in the Puffin series, and may well have supplied the photo used which does not, I think, show AR at his best.
With compliments of the season and best wishes for 1998 to all Tarboarders.
Tim