Jenny

/ Roman door Sigrid Undset. Geautoriseerde vertaling uit het Noorsch door H. J. Smeding. Amsterdam : J. M. Meulenhof, 1932. Third printing. Thick octavo (215 x 160 mm), publisher’s cream-coloured cloth over boards with illustration in green to upper board signed in the image by the artist, M. D. Lapthorn; in the original dust jacket which repeats the design on the upper board but in yellow and black; top edge stained grey; pp. [6], 340, [2 publisher’s ads.]; text in Dutch; cloth spine and edges lightly foxed, dust jacket very fine, internally excellent; a very good copy.

Dutch translation of a novel by Sigrid Undset (1882-1949), the Danish-born Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. The striking cover design on the upper board and dust jacket is by Australian expatriate artist Mabel Dickinson Lapthorn (b. South Melbourne 1889-1975). Lapthorn studied art in London and from around 1915 began to design film posters as well as book covers for the publisher Jonathan Cape. She later worked for the Amsterdam publisher Meulenhoff, designing covers for novels by European writers, most notably those of Sigrid Undset.

No examples of this edition with the Lapthorn cover design traced in Australian institutional collections.