[quote=""annis""]Geoff Taylor did a series of rather cool covers for Anya Seton novels at one stage - they are pictured here at his website:
http://www.geofftaylor-artist.com/galle ... TON%20Anya
Misfit- i should have given you the date of my Avalon edition -- it was a 1978 reprint of the original 1966 Coronet edition.[/quote]
Wow, those are really gorgeous. Wish I had them. It doesn't appear that he did a cover for Katherine, though. Wonder why?
I browsed through the thread of the Katherine covers, and the definite majority of them show Katherine with red or reddish hair. Wonder why? Are there any documents that indicate that was her coloring? Or is red just the "default" hair color for the ultimate femme fatale?
I do like the covers that Chicago Review Press used on their re-releases. Thankfully, they only did a couple of headless women. I don't know how that trend started, but I am so tired of it already.
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Older Seton Covers
- Margaret
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A smidgen of both, I suspect. Not from documents, but from portraits. One of Katherine's children by John of Gaunt was an ancestor of the Tudor line of rulers, and both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I both had reddish hair, so the artist may have felt that was a sufficient shred of evidence to base Katherine's coloring on. But who knows which branch of the family the red hair came from; it may have been the Tudor branch.I browsed through the thread of the Katherine covers, and the definite majority of them show Katherine with red or reddish hair. Wonder why? Are there any documents that indicate that was her coloring? Or is red just the "default" hair color for the ultimate femme fatale?
Browse over 5000 historical novel listings (probably well over 5000 by now, but I haven't re-counted lately) and over 700 reviews at www.HistoricalNovels.info
Just had a quick look at Seton's references, Michy, and it seems fairly clear that she just went with her imagination in describing Katherine as having grey eyes and dark red hair. Apparently Katherine's beauty was attested though, in a contemporary tribute which called her "eximia pulchritudine feminam": an extraordinarily beautiful woman.
- Margaret
- Bibliomaniac
- Posts: 2440
- Joined: August 2008
- Interest in HF: I can't answer this in 100 characters. Sorry.
- Favourite HF book: Checkmate, the final novel in the Lymond series
- Preferred HF: Literary novels. Late medieval and Renaissance.
- Location: Catskill, New York, USA
- Contact:
There's an illustration from an old frontispiece of Chaucer's Troilus and Cressyde that some think may represent Katherine Swynford. See http://katherineswynford.tk/page2/page3/page3.html. No hair showing, though.
Browse over 5000 historical novel listings (probably well over 5000 by now, but I haven't re-counted lately) and over 700 reviews at www.HistoricalNovels.info
Found a couple of vintage editions at the UBS and of course I had to pick them up and scan them.
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At home with a good book and the cat...
...is the only place I want to be
...is the only place I want to be
It looks a lot better IRL, it scanned a bit dark. I was just looking at the covers on the Goodreads page. I love looking at those vintage covers.
At home with a good book and the cat...
...is the only place I want to be
...is the only place I want to be
Sounds about right. I remember it was dark brown rather than black.
This is the cover of my copy of The Turquoise, which I rather like.
OTOH, this one is whoa, scary.
This is the cover of my copy of The Turquoise, which I rather like.
OTOH, this one is whoa, scary.