J. Allen St. John's Moon Maid — Edgar Rice Burroughs First Edition Cover, 1926
Before you stands the first edition dust jacket of Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'The Moon Maid,' painted by the master of Burroughs cover art, J. Allen St. John. A fierce, blue-skinned lunar centaur — one of Burroughs' Kalkars — charges across a rocky, cloud-swept lunar landscape, clutching a primitive spear while dragging a struggling woman in an orange gown behind him. The dynamic diagonal composition and earth-toned atmospheric sky exemplify St. John's confident pulp romanticism at its peak.
St. John delivers full-throated pulp melodrama — a half-man, half-beast alien abductor rendered with genuine painterly skill and compositional confidence. The tension between refined technique and lurid subject matter is exactly the productive friction that defines the best of 1920s adventure cover art.
“The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs”
