The Shadow of Tiresias

This 1903 pamphlet-style cover is austere by later pulp standards: no painted scene, no figures in peril — only a olive-green cloth-textured ground carrying the title in heavy Gothic blackletter type. The Shadow of Tiresias invokes the blind Theban prophet of Greek myth, signaling verse or literary fiction rather than dime-novel sensation. The spare design belongs to the twilight moment before the wood-pulp magazine explosion that would, from roughly 1910 onward, replace such dignity with lurid painted covers and birthed science fiction, sword-and-sorcery, and weird horror as commercial genres. The library call number (PS 3503 .R782) places the author in American poetry. No cover artist is credited or identifiable.