The Shadow of the East

This is not a pulp magazine cover but a cloth-bound hardcover — brick-red linen stamped in green ink with the title THE SHADOW OF THE EAST and the author's name E. M. Hull in rectilinear, almost proto-Art Deco lettering. No illustrated scene appears; the design relies entirely on typography and color, a common economy in British trade bindings of the period. E. M. Hull (Edith Maude Hull) was the author of The Sheik (1919), the desert-romance sensation that launched a subgenre of exotic adventure fiction feeding directly into pulp magazines and eventually comic books — the brooding foreign locale, the imperiled heroine, the dangerous male lead whose identity conceals a secret. No cover artist is credited.