Pulp Fantasy Gallery: The Dying Earth

Based on feedback, the revival of this series has been very well received, so I'll continue with it for a while longer, perhaps through the end of the month. Truth be told, I appreciate being able to take a break from Pulp Fantasy Library, which probably demands the most time and effort of anything I post here. To that end, let's take a look this week at the covers of one of the most influential books on the conception of Dungeons & Dragons – ot its Gygaxian iteration, at any rate – Jack Vance's 1950 collection, The Dying Earth.  

Doing so is something of a cheat, since I actually posted about the original Hillman Periodicals cover at the dawn of this blog. However, I think it's more than worthwhile to be reminded of this cover (by an unknown artist) so as to be able to compare it to those that appeared on later editions of the book.

The next edition of The Dying Earth appeared in 1962, published by Lancer and with a cover by Ed Mesh. A UK edition from Mayflower appeared in 1972, with a cover by Chris Foss. Underwood-Miller produced a limited-run cloth edition of The Dying Earth in 1976, with this striking wrap-around cover by George Barr. The first Pocket Books edition appeared in 1977 and featured this cover by the Brothers Hildebrandt. Two years later, in 1979, Pocket Books reissued the collection, using a very different cover. This is, I believe, the first one I ever saw and so it's left a strong impression on my imagination ever since. The 1985 UK edition from Panther/Grafton features this unusual cover by Geoff Taylor. We'll conclude this post with the last (English language) edition published in the 1980s, Baen's 1986 paperback, with cover artwork by Victoria Poyser.