William S. Burroughs — Penguin Modern Classics Postcard, Penguin Books, London, c. 2014

Publisher-issued postcard reproducing a black-and-white press photograph of William S. Burroughs, credited on the reverse to the Evening Standard / Getty Images. Produced in association with Penguin Modern Classics, most likely around the renewed publication and promotion of Burroughs’s writing during the centenary of his birth in 2014. Penguin’s Modern Classics series includes central works such as Interzone, Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded and The Place of Dead Roads.

The portrait presents Burroughs in hat and heavy coat, cigarette held toward the camera. The reverse converts the image into a functional object of correspondence: divided address field, stamp box and three writing lines, with no accompanying biography or quotation.

Burroughs’s cut-up method treated language as material capable of being divided, transferred and recombined. Here, the author’s image passes through press photography, an image archive and literary publishing before reappearing as a postcard. A portrait converted into publisher identity and released for another circulation.

Offset-printed postcard, 9.5 × 15 cm. Condition: very good. Unused, with light handling and minor edge wear.

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