Again, another foray by Milton Glaser into the realm of expressive typography. Roland Starke’s Something Soft was first published in 1968 by Faber and Faber with this cover, I believe. I can’t identify the date on Glaser’s work, but I have to imagine it was around the same time (it seems there were four editions of the book published between 1968 and 1969). A dust jacket blurb says of the collection, “The characters in Roland Starke’s five short novellas are liars – or perhaps fantasists – determined that their lives should have glamour: where reality falls short, artifice and delusion take its place.”

While the Faber and Faber jacket says “literary fiction,” another edition downplays the literary ambitions of the story collection with the look of a tame romance novel. As for Glaser’s take, his gushing type is both suggestive and satirical.

(You’ll notice the discoloration on the cover; the paper was pasted on cardboard and that’s the rubber cement stain showing through.)