Beyond the elegant chapter headings by Ruth Robbins for the Parnassus’s edition of A Wizard of Earthsea, and Gail Garraty’s fine woodcut-like art in … - Ursula K. Le Guin

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Beyond the elegant chapter headings by Ruth Robbins for the Parnassus’s edition of A Wizard of Earthsea, and Gail Garraty’s fine woodcut-like art in the same style for the early Atheneum editions, until very recently, the books of Earthsea had no illustrations. This was partly by my own decision. After Ruth’s unique wraparound jacket for the first edition of A Wizard of Earthsea—with its splendidly stylized, copper-brown portrait face—cover art for the books mostly went out of my control. The results could be ghastly—the droopy, lily-white wizard of the first Puffin UK paperback; the silly man with sparks shooting out of his fingers that replaced him. Some covers were quite pretty in themselves, but delicate medieval persons on twee islands with castles with pointy towers had nothing to do with my earthy, salty Earthsea. And as for copper or brown or black skin, forget it! Earthsea was bathed in bleach. I was ashamed of the covers that gave the reader every wrong idea about the people and the place. I resented publishers’ art departments that met any suggestion that the cover might resemble something or someone in the book by rejecting it, informing me loftily that they Knew what would Sell (a mystery no honest cover designer would ever claim to know). Paperback houses wanted commercial, all-purpose fantasy covers; YA departments wanted no suggestion of adult concerns. So I discouraged all suggestions of illustration.