The Tower
By W.B. Yeats
Cover design by Thomas Sturge Moore
Macmillan 1928

In Thomas Sturge Moore’s exquisite cover design for Yeats’ The Tower, one of the 20th century’s most masterful books of poetry finds its perfect visual expression and symbol. The design shows the poet’s sturdy Norman keep of Thoor Ballylee in Galway, a great bare cube with a modest millhouse attached, reflected in water and with thick-leafed ash trees emerging from the right, all blocked in gilt on olive green card. The image dominates the cover, on which the title and the author’s name appear in remarkably small capitals near the top. It is a style very much of its time but which has been revived in the cover design for Carol Ann Duffy’s Rapture.