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The new Faber poetry set includes a Sylvia Plath edition with a cover by Peter Lawrence

Next month, Faber & Faber publish a series of six new hardback editions of twentieth-century poetry, each with a specially commissioned cover. The new designs are part of the publishing house’s 80th anniversary celebrations, which also include new editions of the complete works of Samuel Beckett (which we’ll feature on the blog next week)…

Faber invited a selection of prominent illustrators and printmakers to create the covers for the series; the results include a striking series of woodcut and linocut designs.

The titles and illustrators for the poetry series are paired up as follows: WH Auden (selected by John Fuller) cover by Paul Catherall; Sylvia Plath (selected by Ted Hughes) cover by Peter Lawrence; John Betjeman (selected by Hugo Williams) cover by Joe McLaren; TS Eliot (selected by TS Eliot) cover by Clare Curtis; WB Yeats (selected by Seamus Heaney) cover Heaney Nick Morley; Ted Hughes (selected by Simon Armitage) cover by Mark Hearld.

TS Eliot cover by Clare Curtis

Front papers of the Eliot volume by Clare Curtis

Joe McLaren’s cover for the Betjeman volume (note the train at the top)

Front papers for the Betjeman edition by Joe McLaren

The other three books in the series:

Yeats cover by Nick Morley

Auden cover by Paul Catherall

Hughes cover by Mark Hearld