BEYOND THE PERF: Please tell us about the origin of the Literary Arts series.
TERRY MCCAFFREY: Literary Arts as it exists today began as an informal series in 1979, with a stamp featuring John Steinbeck. But the idea of featuring authors and poets on stamps started in 1940 with the Famous Americans series. There were five poets and five authors in that 35-stamp series, which also featured scientists, inventors, composers, artists and educators. Then in 1949 Edgar Allan Poe was honored with a stamp for his 150th birthday. Off and on for the next 20 years, literary figures were featured on stamps.
BTP: You said it began as an “informal” series. At what point did it become the “official” Literary Arts series as listed in the Postal Service Guide to U.S. Stamps?
TM: I don’t believe Steinbeck and some of the others in the beginning were considered a literary arts series. It probably wasn’t until 1995 with the issuance of Tennessee Williams that collectors started asking, “Is this part of a series?” So, we went back and determined when we’d starting featuring authors and poets on a regular basis. Between 1967 and 1978 the majority were poets — there were few authors in that mix. So we wrote a little revisionist history and said, OK, starting in 1979 with Steinbeck, that’s the point at which we began to emphasize authors rather than poets, and that was the inception of Literary Arts.
BTP: When do you decide that a grouping of individual stamps should be considered a series? How influential are queries from the collecting community?
TM: As with Literary Arts, the collecting community does sometimes influence our thinking about series. Collectors like order and will create a series when they see a commonality in design or format or subject. A perfect example of this is what the collecting group refers to as a “flora and fauna series,” which we at the Postal Service have never acknowledged.
BTP: Would you discuss the look of the Literary Arts series? The first six are all vertical commemorative portraits, and all but Hawthorne are single-color engravings.
TM: Yes, the original look was established by Bradbury Thompson, then lead art director and a member of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee. Thompson came up with the idea of doing strong, fairly tight portraits as single-color engravings. Interestingly, Edith Wharton was more of ¾-body portrait; the others were more tightly cropped. It seems likely that Edith Wharton was shown in her Victorian dress because it evoked the time period, whereas in a cropped portrait, she might not have been as easily recognizable as some of the others. Also interesting is that Hawthorne was not done as an engraved stamp but as a full-color reproduction of a painting that hangs in the Grolier Club in New York City. My guess is that CSAC saw the full-color portrait and decided that it was so striking it shouldn’t be converted to a single-color engraving.
BTP: Then in 1989, with the Hemingway issuance, the stamps shifted to full-color reproductions and moved away from engravings.…
TM: I think that was a response to the American public wanting more color. Serious collectors liked the engravings, some of which were exquisite. But at the same time we were trying to appeal more to the American public. So with Hemingway, we moved to full-color stamps. The William Saroyan (1991) stamp was a forerunner to the current format established in 1995 with the Tennessee Williams stamp.
BTP: I’m glad you mentioned that. Beginning with Tennessee Williams, through the current Richard Wright issuance, there is a clear continuity in design — horizontal format, asymmetrical positioning of a tight portrait, incorporation of backgrounds that are evocative of the author’s work. How was that developed?
TM: Art Director Carl Herrman developed the Williams stamp using the work of Michael Deas. Deas had studied stamps from the past and liked the formatting of the Saroyan stamp. We also have to credit Michael Deas with the notion of using backgrounds. He incorporated a streetcar, from Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire. We went on to F. Scott Fitzgerald with the lighthouse from The Great Gatsby. Thornton Wilder had “our town” in the background, and so on. This approach, along with the name in yellow or gold in caps at the top, became the format of the current series.
The format was well accepted and helped “brand” the series. Only twice have we deviated from including the name at the top of the stamp (Longfellow and Richard Wright) because of the way those illustrations were created. Putting the name at the top would have interfered with the subjects’ heads.
BTP: The 1999 Ayn Rand stamp represents a distinct and isolated departure from the post-1995 “branded” look. Why was that one treated differently?
TM: Art Director Phil Jordan and I were on a United Airlines flight in 1997 and picked up the inflight magazine, Hemispheres. Its cover featured the work of Nicholas Gaetano. Phil and I both thought Gaetano would be perfect for author Ayn Rand. Little did we know that he had just completed illustrations for new versions of her works The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Yes, the format is vertical, as opposed to horizontal. And yes, it is totally different. But Rand’s family later told us that they would not have accepted any other illustrator, because they felt Gaetano embodied Rand’s aesthetics and philosophy. So that stamp did break the mold, but we felt it was appropriate to the subject.
BTP: When you have an anomaly within a series, like Ayn Rand, does that stamp acquire any more intrinsic value for collectors?
TM: It generates more comments from the collecting community — not necessarily good comments. It creates a controversy because it’s vertical versus horizontal, or it “doesn’t fit my series book.” Collectors tend to prefer set formats, set looks. If you deviate from the series, it’s upsetting. With some explanation, yes, differences will be accepted. But you don’t want to deviate too much; you don’t want to have too many Ayn Rands in the mix, because then you’ve diluted what you’ve tried to establish.
The series has found a niche audience of collectors. In 2001 we chose not to issue a Literary Arts stamp. Collectors were upset because they had anticipated a stamp for that year’s page in their albums. Since then we’ve made a concentrated effort to do one every year. Interestingly enough, since the series began in 1979, the USPS chose not to issue Literary Arts stamps five times — in 1981, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1993. No groundswell of complaints arose during those years. It wasn’t until we gave the series the “branded look” that originated with Tennessee Williams that we got complaints for failing to issue one — in 2001.
BTP: What are your parameters for selecting a subject for inclusion in the Literary Arts series?
TM: Someone whose body of work has withstood the test of time. There are certainly a lot of authors we have not included. There are authors who merit recognition due to their influence on American culture, but CSAC does not feel that they belong in the Literary Arts series. For example, James Michener. He produced many best-sellers, but is his work of the stature of a Faulkner or a Hemingway? The general response, not only from the committee but also the experts we’ve consulted, is no. That’s why Michener ended up in the Distinguished Americans series and not in the Literary Arts series.
BTP: Richard Wright is being issued as a 2-oz. rate stamp. Is this the first time a Literary Arts stamp has been issued at other than first-class rate?
TM: No. F. Scott Fitgerald was issued in 1996 at the postcard rate. At the unveiling, I was confronted by the editor of “Linn’s Stamp News,” who asked if the denomination of 23¢ was a mistake. At that time the first-class rate was 32¢; he thought we’d inverted the digits. I said, “No, it’s the postcard rate.” It was as if I had committed heresy. There was a lot of hue and cry from the collecting public; they thought it was wrong.
BTP: Do you expect to get feedback because you’re issuing Richard Wright in the mail-use, as opposed to collectible, category?
TM: I expect we will get feedback. We get feedback on every stamp we design. We are moving the Literary Arts issuance over to the mail-use side, to generate more interest in the series. It will be seen more on mail because it is now the 2-oz. rate.
BTP: Will you continue issuing the Literary Arts stamps at other than the first-class rate?
TM: We are suggesting that we will continue that. But if we don’t have an annual increase, then we will issue it as a regular first-class stamp.
BTP: Are there other interesting tidbits about the Literary Arts series you’d like to share?
TM: Only three of the 25 stamps carry just the subject’s last name (Hawthorne, Hemingway and Longfellow). Hawthorne (1983) and Longfellow (2007) were designed that way because of space limitations with their long names, and the Hemingway choice (1989) was made because everyone knew him best by his last name.
The only joint issue was the William Saroyan stamp (1991), issued with Russia. Ogden Nash (2002) is the only U.S. postage stamp ever to contain six complete poems or limericks. The USPS received a few letters of complaint because one of the poems (“The Turtle”) contained the word sex in it, which customers felt was inappropriate for a postage stamp:
The turtle lives twixt plated decks / Which practically conceal its sex / I think it clever of the turtle / In such a fix to be so fertile.
Two postal employees have appeared in this series. William Faulkner was postmaster of a fourth-class post office at the University of Mississippi. He was fired from the job because he was throwing the mail away. Richard Wright worked as a mail clerk in the Chicago post office, and he actually wrote about those experiences in Black Boy, his autobiography. That’s one reason his stamp will be issued at the Chicago post office.
BTP: You indicated earlier that Literary Arts has a niche audience. Do you see a trend toward collecting only certain series or stamps?
TM: Definitely. That’s been the big new direction in the past 15 years — to collect topicals. Cost is a big factor. The average collector feels that our entire program is too expensive, so they go for specific subjects — whether Christmas stamps or Legends of Hollywood or Literary Arts or just portrait stamps. Although we’d like for everyone to collect every stamp, isn’t collecting really about enjoying the experience? The main point is to collect what interests you and to love what you collect. In addition to stamps, I collect tin toys, and building my collections has been a genuine source of pleasure and pride for me.
Our job in developing stamps is to pick subjects worthy of distinction and design them beautifully; to create stamps that inspire and delight; to produce a program that people want to collect, preserve and, most of all, enjoy.