For parts of the internet, a 1976 paperback edition of Madeleine L’Engle’s novel “A Wrinkle in Time” is the source of an enduring mystery: who was the artist behind the eerie, glowing green cover art?
After a few hours of research, podcast host Amory Sivertson thought she had found the answer. She had emailed a gallery to ask if an artist she represented had done the cover, and a staff member said yes.
She was wrong: a day later, the gallery employee apologized for the miscommunication. It would take two months, hundreds of emails and a number of awkward cold calls before she actually found the right name.
The mysterious cover art shows a sturdy centaur with delicate wings flying above a menacing green face with bright red eyes. Steep mountains and fluffy dark clouds surround the terrifying figures. The website Book Riot called the art “nightmare fuel.” The artist’s name is not mentioned anywhere in the book.
Ms. Sivertson thought finding the name of the artist and crediting the person was important for a work that is “on people’s bookshelves and in their hearts and in their memories”.
“This is one of the pieces that survives him,” Ms Sivertson said of the cover. “It’s just… you need to know. We need to find out who is behind it.”
The mystery reached Ms. Sivertson because she is the co-host and senior producer of the “Endless Thread” podcast, which sometimes delves into mysteries. During the show – produced by Boston’s NPR station WBUR – Ms. Sivertson and her co-host, Ben Brock Johnson, find explanations for dilemmas such as Geedis, a warthog-like character who blindsided the internet, and a pile of signs that had been left in the Pennsylvania woods.
For the book art mystery, the podcast picked up where S. Elizabeth, who writes the blog Unquiet Things, left off.
Ms Elizabeth said she first developed a ‘vain curiosity’ about the artist behind the ‘Wrinkle in Time’ cover art in 2019. In 2021 and 2022, her curiosity increased as she worked on her latest book, ‘The Art of Fantasy, a compendium due out Thursday.
In May, she described her search for the artist in a blog post, hoping it would generate new leads. She said she reached out online to people connected to the novel, the fantasy art world, and Ms. L’Engle. Ms Elizabeth contacted Ms L’Engle’s granddaughter on social media platform X to ask if she knew who made the cover, but the account responded with a shrug emoji.
Ms. Elizabeth posted about the search on Reddit, and a commenter there said the mystery would be a good fit for “Endless Thread,” so Ms. Elizabeth shared her request for help on the podcast’s subreddit.
Mrs. Elizabeth did not have a particularly deep connection to the book. When she first started looking for the cover artist, her main memory of the novel was that the plot involved a liverwurst sandwich — “I’m a foodie,” she said — but she thinks it’s very important that artists get what they’re entitled to. to have.
The search for an answer resonated with many online, who sent Ms. Elizabeth guesses about the identity of the artist and tips for her search.
“I think the realization that the artist wasn’t that easy to find – that kindled a fire for a lot of people, because this book was so formative for so many people,” Ms Elizabeth said.
People had guesses (spoiler: Some were correct), but Ms. Sivertson’s hundreds of calls eventually led to an answer. “I was really supported by people writing back and saying, ‘I’ve got some ideas, let me make some calls,'” she said.
Ms Sivertson said these calls were ‘an industry coming back together’, with people who worked in the publishing and illustration industries in the 1970s talking to each other for the first time in decades.
At the end of June, she was given the correct name: Richard Bober. Mr Bober died last year, but Ms Sivertson was able to talk to his relatives in early July and she said they found evidence that he made the cover image.
Mrs. Elizabeth said she wanted to burst into tears when the mystery was solved, because even though Mrs. Sivertson was tenacious, finding the answer seemed like a gamble.
Mrs. Elizabeth had previously seen a work by Mr. Bober, ‘Lady Vampire’, which she said depicts a vampire girl who looks ‘like a snotty mean girl’, with a dog glaring at her in admiration. “At the time I thought, ‘This artist is so cool,'” Ms. Elizabeth recalls.
This cover art mystery appears to be solved, but Ms. Elizabeth has a long list of questions she’d still like answers to, including who did the cover art for the next book in Ms. L’Engle’s series, “A Wind in the Door. Each year, Ms. Elizabeth also posts on social media a photo of a topless woman with a huge headdress, taken in what appears to be the 1920s, in the hopes that someone will know who it is.
“Everyone has countless guesses,” she said. “And some people say, ‘Definitely, yes, this is that person.’ But show me the proof of it.”
