Bill Botten | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 19 May 1935 London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | Artist, illustrator, graphic designer |
William "Bill" Botten (born 19 May 1935) is a British illustrator, designer and artist known for the design of over 250 book covers. [1]
Botten was born in London, England, and was evacuated to the Buckinghamshire countryside for the duration of the Second World War. He left school aged 16 for his first job as a studio boy at advertising agency George Street & Company in the City of London. He returned to Streets after National Service in the Royal Air Force in Iraq.
After working as a designer at magazine publishers Fleetway Publications, London, he became Art Director at Sphere Books, [2] a new paperback book publishers set up by Thomson Corporation in 1965. After a brief partnership with fellow designer Wilson Buchanan, he freelanced full time producing magazine adverts, exhibition stand designs and in the 1980s illustrations for the Avon Products cosmetics company. His most distinctive artistic legacy lies in the book jackets he designed for UK publishers, David Bruce and Watson, Hutchinson and Jonathan Cape. Many of these books are collectable and some command high prices.
Botten produced 120 hardback book covers from the mid 60s to the mid-1980s commissioned by Tony Coldwell at Jonathan Cape. Cape had a reputation for publishing first editions of important authors. Botten designed and illustrated the cover for Salman Rushdie’s breakthrough novel Midnight’s Children . [3] He took the photograph for Kingsley Amis’s novel Girl, 20 in his suburban home’s garage which he transformed into a photographic studio with a neighbour as model. The writer Ian McEwan’s first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites is described as having “Beardsleyesque elegance”. [4] Cape commissioned six covers for titles by science fiction author J G Ballard between 1973 and 1982. The covers of first editions of Ballard’s Crash and Hello America show Botten’s skill in airbrush technique. They also show his attention to how the book’s spine appears on the shelf with his jacket art often extending on to the back cover. The author Brian Aldiss liked Botten’s cover for the first edition of New Arrivals, Old Encounters. [5] He always read the book before designing the cover. [6]
Jonathan Cape published Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and subsequently Bond books written by other authors. Bill was asked to follow the style of Richard Chopping, designer of the original Fleming novels such as From Russia with Love (1957) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1965). Botten produced artwork for two novels by John Gardner: For Special Services (1982) and Icebreaker (1983) in Chopping’s style. When Christopher Wood’s novelisation of the screenplay for James Bond,The Spy Who Love Me (1977) was published by Jonathan Cape, Botten broke free of that earlier genre and produced a large oil painting which referenced the Pre-Raphaelite style. [7] The subsequent novel of the film James Bond andMoonraker (1979) was in a different style again, using artists gouache.
The commercial work earned him a living. His own work covers figures, abstracts and often surreal humour. [8]
Crash is a novel by English author J. G. Ballard, first published in 1973 with cover designed by Bill Botten. It follows a group of car-crash fetishists who become sexually aroused by staging and participating in car accidents, inspired by the famous crashes of celebrities.
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist and short story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations among human psychology, technology, sex, and the mass media. Ballard became associated with New Wave science fiction for post-apocalyptic novels, such as The Drowned World (1962), but also courted political controversy with the short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968), and the novel Crash (1973), a story about car-crash fetishists.
Thunderball is the ninth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, and the eighth full-length Bond novel. It was first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 27 March 1961, where the initial print run of 50,938 copies quickly sold out. The first novelisation of an unfilmed James Bond screenplay, it was born from a collaboration by five people: Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, Ivar Bryce and Ernest Cuneo, although the controversial shared credit of Fleming, McClory and Whittingham was the result of a courtroom decision.
The Man with the Golden Gun is the twelfth and final novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series and fourteenth Bond book overall. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in the UK on 1 April 1965, eight months after the author's death. The novel was not as detailed or polished as the others in the series, leading to poor but polite reviews. Despite that, the book was a best-seller.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the tenth novel and eleventh book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 1 April 1963. After the relative disappointment of The Spy Who Loved Me, the author made a concerted effort to produce another novel adhering to the tried and tested formula. The initial and secondary print runs sold out, with over 60,000 books sold in the first month, double that of the previous book. Fleming wrote the book in Jamaica whilst the first film in the Eon Productions series of films, Dr. No, was being filmed nearby.
The Spy Who Loved Me is the ninth novel and tenth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published by Jonathan Cape on 16 April 1962. It is the shortest and most sexually explicit of Fleming's novels, as well as a clear departure from previous Bond novels in that the story is told in the first person by a young Canadian woman, Vivienne Michel. Bond himself does not appear until two-thirds of the way through the book. Fleming wrote a prologue to the novel giving Michel credit as a co-author.
For Your Eyes Only is a collection of short stories by the British author Ian Fleming, featuring the fictional British Secret Service agent Commander James Bond, the eighth book to feature the character. It was first published by Jonathan Cape on April 11 April 1960. It marked a change of format for Fleming, who had previously written James Bond stories only as full-length novels.
Raymond Benson is an American writer known for his James Bond novels published between 1997 and 2003.
Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape (1879–1960), who was head of the firm until his death.
Literary fiction, mainstream fiction, non-genre fiction, serious fiction, high literature, artistic literature, and sometimes just literature are labels that, in the book trade, refer to market novels that do not fit neatly into an established genre ; or, otherwise, refer to novels that are character-driven rather than plot-driven, examine the human condition, use language in an experimental or poetic fashion, or are simply considered serious art.
For Special Services, first published in 1982, was the second novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright, it was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape and in the United States by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. Cover designed by Bill Botten.
Icebreaker, first published in 1983, was the third novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright, it was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape and is the first Bond novel to be published in the United States by Putnam, beginning a long-standing association. Part of the book takes place in Northern Europe, including Finland; to make his book as authentic as possible, Gardner even visited Finland.
The James Bond Dossier (1965), by Kingsley Amis, is a critical analysis of the James Bond novels. Amis dedicated the book to friend and background collaborator, the poet and historian Robert Conquest. Later, after Ian Fleming's death, Amis was commissioned as the first continuation novelist for the James Bond novel series, writing Colonel Sun (1968) under the pseudonym Robert Markham. The James Bond Dossier was the first, formal, literary study of the James Bond character. More recent studies of Fleming's secret agent and his world include The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming's Novels to the Big Screen (2001), by the historian Jeremy Black.
Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book, magazine, newspaper (tabloid), comic book, video game, music album, CD, videotape, DVD, or podcast.
Richard Wasey Chopping was a British illustrator and author best known for painting the dust jackets of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels starting with From Russia, with Love (1957).
A book cover is any protective covering used to bind together the pages of a book. Beyond the familiar distinction between hardcovers and paperbacks, there are further alternatives and additions, such as dust jackets, ring-binding, and older forms such as the nineteenth-century "paper-boards" and the traditional types of hand-binding. The term "Bookcover" is often used for a book cover image in library management software. This article is concerned with modern mechanically produced covers.
Greg and Tim Hildebrandt, known as the Brothers Hildebrandt, are American twin brothers who worked collaboratively as fantasy and science fiction artists for many years. They produced illustrations for comic books, movie posters, children's books, posters, novels, calendars, advertisements, and trading cards. Tim Hildebrandt died on June 11, 2006.
Devil May Care is a James Bond continuation novel written by Sebastian Faulks. It was published in the UK by Penguin Books on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ian Fleming, the creator of Bond. The story centers on Bond's investigation into Dr. Julius Gorner, a megalomaniac chemist with a deep-seated hatred of England.
Solo is a James Bond continuation novel written by William Boyd. It was published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 26 September 2013 in hardback, e-book and audio editions, and in the US by HarperCollins on 8 October 2013.
