The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, Bantam

Published February 1, 2026
Contributed by Florian Hardwig


Source: www.abebooks.com Uploaded to Flickr by Black Falcon Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Front cover, 10th printing, December 1974






Cooper Black Italic in use for Bantam’s paperback edition of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1965), first published in 1967. Cooper Black Italic is used with a couple of swash caps. Some were included in the metal original, but most of those seen here were added only later, in phototype. While the front cover features two swashy Th ligatures, the back cover has an unligated pair. Furthermore, the glyphs for C and L are different between the two settings of the title.

Blurbs are set in News Gothic and Caledonia. The cover artist is unknown.

Who is Oedipa Maas? And what was she doing when the Paranoids blew out all the lights? What was the strange legacy of Pierce Inverarity that first led her to the world-wide conspiracy known as the Tristero System, and them on into the mystery and enigma of America itself?




Source: www.abebooks.com Uploaded to Flickr by Black Falcon Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Back cover, 10th printing, December 1974




Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Steve and tagged with “cooperblack” and “newsgothic”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Back and front cover, 1967



This post was originally published at Fonts In Use
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