Lyra's Press
Presents
Don't Look Now
A Macabre Tale, by
Daphne Du Maurier
Published In A Hand-Bound Limited Edition From
Lyra's Books
Publishing
“‘Oh God,’ he thought, ‘what a bloody silly way to die…’”
Don’t Look Now was first published in 1971 as part of the short story collection “Not After Midnight, and Other Stories”. It was famously adapted as a movie in 1973, directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.
This is the first time that this short story has been published in a standalone edition.
Our edition is newly illustrated with twenty-one bold and vibrant digital artworks – including two double page spreads and one triple page fold-out – by award-winning artist, printer and publisher, Leslie Gerry. Our edition also includes an exclusive afterword by acclaimed director, Mike Flanagan, known for his film and TV work including The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep and Midnight Mass.
All copies of this title will be signed by the artist and afterword contributor.
The books are printed with a combination of letterpress and giclée. The text is printed letterpress by Hand and Eye in three colours, using photopolymer plates. The colour images are printed as giclée by the artist on his twelve-colour, wide-format printer. Each individual print will be hand fed through the printer and all will be printed on heavy weight mouldmade paper. This process is extremely time consuming, with the artist only able to print around five books worth of images per day. The triple page and double page spreads are tipped onto tabs, allowing the pages to fold out without any sewing through the middle. All single page images are sewn into the books. Any blank pages this creates are then cut down to tabs by hand.
All copies, as always, are bound by us at Ludlow Bookbinders, by hand and using the finest materials available.
This edition has the full and enthusiastic backing of the whole du Maurier estate, which includes the author’s own children.
Author
Daphne du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) was a British author and playwright whose work has left a lasting imprint on 20th century literature. Best known for her psychologically complex and suspenseful novels, she often explored themes of identity, obsession and the supernatural. Her most well-known works include Don’t Look Now, Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel, as well as Rebecca and The Birds, both of which were famously adapted into films by Alfred Hitchcock.
Born into a creative and literary family, du Maurier began writing as a young woman and quickly gained critical and commercial success. Her work often draws on the moody landscapes of Cornwall, where she lived for much of her life, and is notable for its strong atmosphere, richly drawn characters, and subtle undercurrents of psychological tension. She is widely recognised as a master of modern gothic and psychological drama.
Artist
Leslie Gerry
Leslie Gerry is an artist, designer, and publisher based in the Cotswolds, UK. A long-time friend and collaborator of Ludlow Bookbinders, his distinctive work has garnered wide recognition and numerous accolades. In 2017, he was awarded the coveted Book of the Year at the British Book Awards (BBD&PA) for Havana, and in 2021, he received the Best Limited Edition and Fine Binding award for Marrakesh. His work is held in many prominent academic and private collections around the world.
Leslie creates his artwork digitally, using a stylus and Wacom tablet to build striking compositions from flat areas of colour. Each image is meticulously constructed by ‘cutting out’ coloured shapes and layering them to form a digital collage. These images can be scaled to any size without loss of quality. No images are scanned; instead, the files are printed directly from the artist’s computer onto mould-made paper using a wide-format, twelve-colour inkjet printer.
Primarily known for his travel and landscape art, Leslie welcomed the opportunity to collaborate with us on this title. It allowed him to revisit his work on Venice, but this time with a narrative dimension.
Afterword
Mike Flanagan
Mike Flanagan is an American filmmaker, writer, and editor whose work has redefined modern horror through its fusion of psychological nuance, emotional complexity, and supernatural themes. Known for creating deeply human stories within chilling narratives, his films and series often explore grief, trauma, addiction, faith, and the fragile boundaries between reality and the unknown. He first gained critical attention with the feature film Oculus (2013), and went on to direct a range of acclaimed projects including Hush (2016), Gerald’s Game (2017), Doctor Sleep (2019) and The Life of Chuck (2025).
Mike is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking work with Netflix, where he created and directed a series of atmospheric and thematically rich horror dramas. The Haunting of Hill House (2018) was lauded for its emotional depth and innovative storytelling, followed by The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Midnight Mass (2021), The Midnight Club (2022), and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023). His work is marked by a recurring ensemble cast, elegant visual storytelling, and a reverence for literary and philosophical sources. He is widely, and rightly, regarded as one of the most influential voices in contemporary cinema.
Design Notes
Marcelo Anciano
Rich has worked as a binder for Leslie Gerry’s own publications for many years, but he had always wanted to collaborate with him on one of his own published books. When the opportunity arose to portray his beloved Venice in one of Lyra’s editions, his immediate thought was of the splendid prints Leslie had created, years ago, of Venice.
Our edition is by one of the most prestigious authors: Daphne du Maurier. Her story Don’t Look Now, set in Venice, was famously adapted into an acclaimed film by Nicolas Roeg, starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.
Leslie paints digitally, spending days constructing layers of colour to build each detailed image. His process is extraordinary – a digital technique reminiscent of silkscreen printing, meticulously layering flat colours over one another. It’s a method Leslie has mastered over the years. This was his first time working with a fictional narrative and Rich felt the images he would create could result in a breathtakingly striking book. He was right.
I wanted to preserve the intensity of Leslie’s richly coloured prints and also create a colour theme that would run through the entire story. We designed the book to echo Leslie’s previous landscape work, using double-page spreads and a larger page size, but also to evoke a cinematic sense of narrative. Visually, the storytelling begins in bright daylight and gradually transitions into twilight and then into night. Venice can feel very idyllic and holiday-like during the day, but the same locations – at night, with low lighting and shadowed alleyways – become deeply unsettling. Leslie captures this visual transformation in his vivid and unique style.
The fact that it’s a short story meant we could include a substantial number of images, allowing us to create cinematic page turns and a flowing visual rhythm. This was exactly my kind of project! It took over a year of work, blending Leslie’s signature printmaking with du Maurier’s haunting story, and I’m extraordinarily pleased with the result.
It’s one of our most visual, subtly sophisticated, and richly atmospheric books (which is saying something, considering we’ve done Death and Honey, A Christmas Carol, Coraline, Frozen Hell, The Alchemist – all of them rich and highly visual projects). When readers immerse themselves in this edition, they’ll experience a visual journey that, we hope, honours and elevates the Fine Press tradition.
Design Notes
Richard Tong
I’ve been a huge admirer of Leslie Gerry’s art and publishing work for many years, and I was very keen to make this edition in a similar spirit to his own books. Leslie’s artwork deserves to be seen at scale, and although we couldn’t produce a book quite as large as his usual format, we did opt for something significantly larger than our typical editions. The aim was to make his images as bold and vivacious as possible – so that’s what we did!
Part of what makes Leslie’s art ‘pop’ is his method of printing and the depth of colour he can produce. We knew from the outset that offset or digital printing wouldn’t do his work justice. Having Leslie print the artwork himself by hand-feeding each sheet through the printer was the only way to preserve the integrity and energy of the images. The way he creates and prints his paintings means this book is as close to a collection of original artworks as a printed edition can get. These aren’t merely reproductions; they are the artwork – direct from the originals, and printed by the artist himself.
For the bindings, I wanted them to sit comfortably alongside the art while still retaining the distinct identity of a ‘Lyra’s’ book. A bit of a blend between my style and Leslie’s, if you will. The bindings for his own books have a minimalist, bold, graphic look, and I wanted to echo that while layering in some other tactile and interpretive elements.
As I considered how best to reflect the mood and setting of the story (while also complementing Leslie’s visuals) I kept returning to the idea of Venice itself. It’s long been a favourite place of mine, and there are two things that strike me most when I’m there: the light and the water. Early on, I decided that water should be the focus of the bindings. I immediately thought of Suminagashi paper – a Japanese marbling technique where ink is floated on the surface of water and gently manipulated to create ripple effects.
For this, I approached Victoria Hall, who is, without question, the UK’s finest Suminagashi and paste paper artist. I’ve admired Victoria’s work for years and have often used her papers on bindings for Ludlow, but this was the first time I’d used them for one of my own publications. Together, we developed a couple of different papers – most notably for the Numbered edition, which features a single blue ripple running through the sheet, suggesting the Grand Canal of Venice.
With the Lettered edition, I wanted to go a step further than usual and include an oversized portfolio of some of Leslie’s artwork, which was an ideal chance to showcase the images at an even larger scale. The portfolio comes as a separate volume, since incorporating it into the solander box would have made the entire set far too large to sit comfortably on any shelf. It would have been absolutely enormous!
Structurally, I chose a square/flat-back spine for the books to allow the pages to open as wide as possible – similar to what we did with Frozen Hell for Arete Editions. This approach minimises image loss in the gutter, especially at the beginning and end of the book, and reduces overall swell along the spine edge.
As always for me, developing the binding designs involved a lot of back-and-forth, experimenting with countless colour combinations across both editions and producing lots of test pieces. It was an extremely tricky task trying to balance the macabre tone of du Maurier’s story while keeping in mind Leslie’s graphic style and his own previous binding choices.
In the end, I’m very pleased with what we’ve created – our love letter to a bold and creepy Venice!
Design Notes
Leslie Gerry
As Marcelo has already mentioned, this was the first time I had been asked to illustrate a work of fiction, and I must say I found it both stimulating and challenging. A completely new experience. With my own books, such as Havana, New York Reflections, or Marrakesh, I describe what I’ve observed using painting alone. I try to capture those first impressions of a city or landscape visually, working from photographs and memory. Then I like to include a writer’s account of the same place, so the book presents two independent perspectives: one in image, one in text.
With Don’t Look Now, I read the story multiple times and gradually formed a mental image of the narrative. In a way, I created my own personal movie, beginning with the boat trip to Torcello. As I worked through the scenes, the story started to occupy my thoughts more and more. I almost felt I was inside it. The world du Maurier had created became strangely familiar and unsettling, as if I were remembering something rather than inventing it. A surprisingly personal experience.
Although I was familiar with the iconic film adaptation, which I saw back in the seventies, I tried not to let it influence me too much. I wanted to respond to the story on its own terms. Venice is a special place for me, so utterly unique, and I’ve drawn inspiration from it before. And, of course, Canaletto has always been an influence. I also already knew many of the locations in the book from my own visits over the years. I’ve often become lost at dusk in the shadowy passages near the Arsenale, and I remember well the sense of disorientation, even anxiety, that creeps in as daylight begins to fade. Those personal experiences helped me tap into the eerie atmosphere that emerges as the story develops.
One of the most difficult elements to visualise was the dwarf. She’s a fleeting but pivotal figure, and for much of the story she exists only as a vague, haunting presence, glimpsed briefly from a distance. I struggled to find the right tone for her – something that would feel both real and unreal, menacing and bewilderingly unexpected. In the end, she came to me quite suddenly, almost fully formed, at the point in the story when she finally emerges from the shadows. Her presence is brief but shocking, and she unleashes a moment of violence that is so sudden and startling, it jolts the story from unease into pure horror.
Creating the visuals for Don’t Look Now was a journey! Imaginative and at times unexpectedly intense. But I thoroughly enjoyed the process, and I hope the images offer readers a fresh way into du Maurier’s haunting vision of Venice.
