Robert Hansen's Copy of Das eckige Ei [The Square Egg] by Ronald Searle

The American edition of The Square Egg & The Vicious Circle (1968) puts one of author Ronald Searle'sNew Yorker cartoons on the dust cover. This drawing is evidently the reason the title has to be in two parts.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274971807916?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5338722076&customid=&toolid=10050

Ronald Searle The New Yorker, November 12, 1966, page 59

The New Yorker drawing, with some color added to the eggs, wraps around onto the spine and just onto the back of the dust jacket: 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/363744540781?...

No doubt very shortly after its November publication, Searle turned this cartoon into a 1966 lithographic print in an edition of 50 (Gurlitt 1). Here, I believe, he answers a fan's inquiry about it:

Searle takes a very different approach with the cover of the British Edition. It is called simply The Square Egg, and no vicious circle is anywhere to be found. Instead, the cover features a man walking with an open umbrella, overwhelmed by a cascade of rubber stamped pointing hands. This is a rather paranoia-inducing image, with the square egg relegated merely to a floating border around title and author.

https://bookpatrol.net/product/the-square-egg-by-ronald-searle/

The German edition of Ronald Searle'sThe Square Egg is called Das eckige Ei and it closely resembles the British edition. Robert Hansen's former copy is inscribed by the artist in English. There is a sketch of a bird sitting on a very tall square egg, more of a square pillar, really.

Ronald Searle AbeBooks listing accessed December 26, 2021 https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=14833589760&searchurl=xpod%3Doff%26bi%3D0%26ds%3D30%26bx%3Doff%26sortby%3D1%26an%3DRonald%2BSearle%26recentlyadded%3Dall%26sgnd%3Don&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp2-_-title9

https://www.booklooker.de/B%C3%BCcher/Ronald-Searle+Das-eckige-Ei-Cartoons/id/A02iy0IL01ZZ0

Ronald Searle The New Yorker, September 23, 1967, page 42

Searle created a new color cover for the 1981 Penguin paperback:

Why let a good idea go to waste? It can be fascinating to watch a cartoonist work through variations on a theme. Here's one of Searle's best, slightly cropped, perhaps because it is scanned from a postcard. (You can see the full composition in Ronald Searle in Perspective, page 85. Its shape is somewhat, well, square.)

The Outsider (large detail, 1977)

Ronald Searle https://geritsel.tumblr.com/post/180861856671/ronald-searle-the-square-egg

Searle's secretary Jean Ellsmoor's copy of The Square Egg is the book on the right, one of three sold at auction in 2006. It is, I believe, the quintessential example of a personalized copy of The Square Egg.

Copyright information from the British edition of The Square Egg (1968) https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30916512562&searchurl=pics%3Don%26sortby%3D17%26tn%3Dthe%2Bsquare%2Begg%26kn%3Dronald%2Bsearle%26an%3Dronald%2Bsearle&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-image1#&gid=1&pid=5

Cartoons by Warren Miller and Ronald Searle https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1966-11-12/flipbook/60/

Cartoons by Robert Kraus and Ronald Searle https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1967-09-23/flipbook/44/

Note:  You can see more of Ronald Searle's birds and their eggs—square and otherwise—on Perpetua, the Ronald Searle tribute blog curated by Matt Jones, right here.

https://www.luciusbooks.com/shop/art-books/the-square-egg-and-the-vicious-circle/

03891