Posted by Red | May 6, 2009, 22:17 (EST) | 14 Comments
Category: Books

In recent months there has been an influx of new people in the fandom who have just read The Vampire Diaries, in particular the double-volume reprints from 2007. In fact, many newcomers to the books have been known to assume that there are just three books in the series rather than the actual five. People are surprised to discover that the books were originally printed as individual volumes, and even more surprised to find out how long the series has existed.

The Vampire Diaries has been around since 1991, and has been reprinted many times over in many different countries. You can imagine that with the original four books alone, that generates quite a lot of covers. We figured it might be cool to showcase some of these various covers from the original series, from the old to the new, the interesting to the bizarre.

Thanks to Lorraine at the LJS Cover Resource and Incanto for providing these covers for the article. As always, you can expect some minor spoilers ahead. Clicking on the picture thumbnails will take you to larger, clearer versions of the covers.

The Original Covers: North America and the United Kingdom

Chances are, if you’re a fan from the ’90s, it’s one of these two sets of covers that you’ll have. They’ll be tattered and torn, bent with cracked spines, and maybe even have some pages threatening to fall out on you. The more prevalent cover set is, of course, the North American version (pictured left). In fact, the first set of reprints in 1999 were actually a slightly modified variation of these covers). If you you were a UK fan, then you’ll have a lovely, matching set of the original trilogy (pictured right), and then a copy of the USA version of Dark Reunion (it wasn’t published in the UK until 2001), looking a little out of place because of the different design and dimensions. The OCD among us overlook that niggling detail as best we can, because getting hold of Dark Reunion in the UK in the 90s was an epic mission, and we took what we could get.

France, Germany, Italy and Spain

While there was a 1993 printing of The Vampire Diaries in Germany, and some uncertainly-dated early-’90s prints in Denmark (more on these later), it wasn’t until a few years later that the series was translated into more languages. France bucked the dark, gothic trend with a set of rather spiffy white covers in 2000. They were, for the most part, pretty relevant to the story, complete with lapis lazuli ring for The Awakening (left). Germany (right) also had some rather effective reprints in 2002, going with a similar – yet darker – approach, with simple images that did, again, have something to do with the books. One might even think they’d have read the books in order to know to put a falcon on the cover. Imagine that.

In 2008 the series was published in both Italy (left) and Spain (right). Whereas the covers from France and Germany were relevant to the series, these covers seem to have little (if anything) to do with the story, and instead use images that are likely designed to catch the eye in a post-Twilight publishing world. The blood and feather from Spain is actually pretty effective and nice to look at, and you can interprate that as a crow feather well enough. However, the rose and black fingernails from Italy? Boggles the mind, and the more cynical among us can’t help but think they’re trying a little too hard to emulate the Twilight apple cover…

Post-Twilight: Poland and Spain

After what seems to be a marketing success with the minimal covers of Twilight, many of the reprints and foreign prints appear to be heading down a similar path, as you can see from the cover from Poland (left) and another from Spain (right). While some of them do, admittedly, look pretty stylish, many fans feel they lack a certain amount of character that the earlier printings had. Strange as though many of them may have been, they were certainly memorable, which isn’t something that can be said for many of the more modern covers, alas.

The Bizarre Covers: Denmark, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom

While some of the covers may be fantastic and others are nothing special, some of the covers we’ve seen for The Vampire Diaries are completely wacky and have little logic to them at all. In fact, some of them are so bad that they tip over into awesome.

It has to be said that some of the strangest covers are the ones from outside of North America. I’d love to be able to say that my own United Kingdom was exempt from that, but alas, we are not. The evidence is in the woodgrain of the 2007 reprints. Quite what the covers have to do with the books, we know not, but we assume that this was an attempt to appeal to the younger readers with bold colours and mutant flowers (and really, if I saw those plants in reality, I’d fear that the Triffids had landed). I have no clue if that marketing ploy was successful or not, but they certainly provide some amusement to old-time fans. Especially those of us who wonder if the woodgrain theme is an indication that Damon has taken up carpentry in his spare time.

But, the UK is – mercifully – not alone in its wacky cover problem!

Here’s one of the 1993 offerings from Germany. It’s the cover for Dark Reunion and while we have to give them points for having vampire brothers on the cover, well… it speaks for itself, really. The stereotypical Dracula capes! The eyebrows! The weird fingernails! The appalling table manners! As if that all wasn’t bad enough, it seems that Stefan and Damon are exact replicas of each other! Who knew that they’d perfected the art of cloning in Renaissance Italy, eh?

Denmark got in on the act early on, too. Though, as far as we can tell, they only ever published The Awakening (pictured) and The Struggle. No wonder, because these covers are kind of scary. Answers on a postcard if you can tell us just who, exactly, this rather buxom black lady with a ginormous bosom in a red dress is. If Maya Angelou wrote a series of novels about angsty vampires, this would surely be the cover. However, given that even Meredith only has an olive complexion in L.J. Smith’s series, this cover remains a mystery.

Finally, we have Russian covers (provided by our very own Incanto) for some complete random hilarity. In fact, the entire range of L.J. Smith books printed in Russia are pretty hilarious, but it’s the Vampire Diaries ones we’re interested in. We have been reliably informed by Incanto (who originates from that region) that Russian publishers have a habit of randomly picking pretty pictures with no regard to whether or not they have anything to do with the books. As you can see, the results are quite interesting. If we’re to go by these covers, then The Awakening (left) is all about a red-headed girl who drinks blood and is best friends with a purple butterfly. We can only assume that this is, in fact, Bonnie’s pictoral rendition of how she wants to look in her coffin when she dies young and beautiful. Because she’s romantic like that.

Moving on to The Struggle we’re confronted with a picture of tragedy that really doesn’t have a thing to do with the books in appearance, but points for effort in capturing Stefan’s inner-anguish. I mean, sure, there’s a black bird of some description on there, but you’re left with the feeling that it happened completely by accident. But that doesn’t matter. Because the blood tears! The long hair! The pointy ears! Damon would sneer at the thought of being portrayed like that, and even Stefan would have to admit the look is too emo, even for him.

Frankly, we can’t wait for the rest of the Russian covers in the series. ;)

These are just a small sample of all the different covers for the Vampire Diaries that are out there. You can see a huge variety of them over on the LJS Cover Resource. Many thanks to Lorraine (who runs the site) for all her effort in collecting these – and other LJS book covers – in one convenient place. If you have access to any scans (especially hi-res) of covers that Lorraine doesn’t have, or only has low-res versions of, please be sure to get in touch with her so she can add them to the collection.

If you’d like to discuss the wild and wonderful covers on L.J. Smith’s other books, you should head over to the Devil’s Playground Forums and join in on the dicussions there that crop up quite frequently.

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