Arnie Levin and Ronald Searle: The Owl and the Pussycat and The New Yorker

Edward Lear
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

https://www.mediastorehouse.com/granger-art-on-demand/cats/owl-pussycat-drawing-edward-lear-book-nonsense-songs-6249501.html?prodid=7287

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43188/the-owl-and-the-pussy-cat

More than a century after the original publication of Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (1871), the famous nonsense poem improbably served as the inspiration for two outstanding New Yorker covers published exactly five years apart. Not coincidentally, these two covers neatly bracket the five-year editorial reign of Robert Gottlieb. The moonlit 1987 cover is by Arnie Levin; the 1992 cover set on Central Park Lake is by Ronald Searle.

Arnie Levin
The New Yorker, July 27, 1987

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1987-07-27/flipbook/CV1/

Ronald Searle
The New Yorker, July 27, 1992

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1992-07-27/flipbook/CV1/

* * *

Incidentally, a more tempestuous treatment of the subject by Searle is today in the collection of Robert L. Forbes. It is apparently undated.

Ronald Searle
The Owl and the Pussycat

Ronald Searle
Christie's South Kensington
July 29, 2008

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43188/the-owl-and-the-pussy-cat

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