Reading Invisible Man by Design

The design and redesign of various editions of Invisible Man serves as an index of Ellison’s fluctuating status in the literary marketplace. From Random House’s modernist dust jackets to Signet’s eye-catching pulps to Vintage’s “hip” reprints, the designs of Ellison’s books reveal the surprising turns by which his work (and midcentury modernism generally) has been incorporated into institutions of reading. This chapter approaches the history of those designs as a privileged site for examining Ellison’s canonization as an American author.