25 of the Best Covers for Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Sixty-seven years ago, on April 14, 1952, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man was published to instant critical acclaim. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, and has continued to be an enduring classic, affecting generation after generation of readers and thinkers. The cover of the first edition is rightly iconic, but I realized that it’s the only one I ever see, so I dug around to see what other treatments Ellison’s masterpiece has gotten over the years. Here, for your scrolling pleasure, are 25 of the best that I found.

First edition, Random House, 1952, design by Edward McKnight Kauffer

Victor Gollancz, London, 1953

Signet Books 1953, cover by James Avati

Einaudi (Italy), 1956

Modern Library, 1963

Penguin Modern Classics, 1965, cover illustration by Alan Aldridge

Penguin Classics, 1965

Vintage Books 30th Anniversary Edition, 1972

Knopf, 1972

Penguin Modern Classics, 1976

Vintage Books, 1980

Einaudi (Italy), 1993

Vintage, 1995

Penguin Modern Classics, 2001

Penguin Modern Classics UK, 2001

Penguin Classics, 2001

Grasset (France), 2002

ALLFA (Romania), 2012

Vintage, 2012, design by Cardon Webb

José Olympio (Brazil), 2013

Penguin UK, 2014

Κέδρος (Greece), 2017

Ex Libris (Croatia), 2018

Solum Forlag (Norway), 2018

Aufbau Verlag (Germany), 2019