BOOK COVERS

IN HIS CAREER AS a book cover artist Bruce Pennington produced over two hundred for many of the most famous authors in the fields of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Below is a small selection, beginning with some of his covers for a series of Ray Bradbury books in the late 1960s.

Originally printed on a silver background, they 'reflected the obsession of the times with all things psychedelic and exotic'.

BELOW IS A SELECTION of Pennington book covers that have not previously been reproduced in any other collection of his work. Click HERE for a page about when his career really took off in 1974.

SOMETIMES A PARTICULAR BOOK-COVER painting has several reincarnations through different publishers throughout the world, earning the artist more royalties in the form of second rigts.

The Armoured Horseman shown below is a typical example. Originally produced by Pennington for a British publisher as the cover of a collection of Sword & Sorcery stories, it was later used by Dutch and other publishers in the same standard paperback format.

In 2008 it was reproduced in the United States on a larger scale as the cover of a luxury 'coffee table' anthology devoted to supernatural fiction.

THEN IN IN JUNE 2009 the same picture appeared on the cover of Fantasy Art magazine published in Beijing, the first and foremost forum for both western and eastern fantasy art in China. The magazine also carried an interview with Pennington. Click on the thumbnails below to see the article. You'll need to know Chinese to read it, though.

NEXT COMES A GALLERY of distinctly macabre book covers that have also not appeared in any previous collection of Pennington's work.

BY WAY OF CONTRAST we now have a selection of nubile ladies from Pennington's past. The lower four historical titles demonstrate his ability to shift from one genre to another (depicting the past as well as the future with relative ease).