



11.04.09
Alexandra Cardia | Essays

From Cabinet: Jacket Required

An 1830 dust jacket, one of the oldest to have survived. Courtesy Bodleian Library, Oxford University

Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as referring to “a protective (and usually decorative) paper cover placed around a bound book, usually with the title and author’s name printed on it,” the phrase “dust cover” or “dust jacket” was first used in the late nineteenth century. The earliest dust jackets, dating to the 1830s, encased the entire book. Their primary function was as protective wrapping, which means that many nineteenth-century dust jackets were disposed of or lost after being removed from their books. The standard library practice of unsheathing books before cataloging them for circulation has also contributed to the rarity of surviving early dust jackets.

In April 2009, for example, one of the earliest known dust jackets was found at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. Hidden in an assortment of book-trade ephemera purchased in the 1890s and never fully catalogued, the worn and faded piece of paper imprinted with black ink had long been separated from the volume it encased, an 1830 gift book entitled Friendship’s Offering. Gift books, or literary annuals — popular collections of essays, short fiction, and poetry based upon late eighteenth-century French and German illuminated almanacs — were richly decorated volumes, bound in silk, leather, or glazed paper, and designed to be given away, particularly around the Christmas and New Year holidays. Dust jackets, such as the one at the Bodleian, ensured that the gift reached its recipient in perfect condition. Clive Hurst, the head of rare books and printed ephemera at the Bodleian, believes that such a dust jacket is more accurately described as a wrapper, “protecting the book from handling damage (which could include dust).” In fact, the creases where the paper had been folded around the volume, as well as remnants of wax where it had been sealed, are still visible on the jacket.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, as publishers began to employ more durable bookbinding materials, the need for strictly protective wrappings diminished. The sober, utilitarian cover gave way to the dust jacket as advertising vehicle, culminating in the vivid graphics, stylized fonts, and “special effects” such as embossing and metallic inks that today scream from bookstore shelves everywhere.


This article originally appeared in Cabinet, Issue 35, Fall 2009 and has been republished here with their kind permission.


Posted in: Media



Comments [5]

Fashion is an imposition, a reign on freedom.
http://twurl.nl/885t8l
nasir
11.09.09
12:42

from book binding to dust jacket with full of advertisement, there is now for paper books the decorative item. In Japan, all bookshop clerks will propose a book cover once you bought one. Indeed, in the train, café, subways, you will never know what people are reading.

The last evolution of the advertisement on books is advertisement in books with patents by Amazon for in content ads on the kindle.
karl
11.09.09
06:59

I don't know if this will please or displease Karl, but we're designing book jackets that have nothing to do with any book at all. www.bookcityjackets.com.

Jeremy (Book City Jackets)
Jeremy
11.09.09
05:18

I don't know if this will please or displease Nasir, but I believe that line should read "fashion is an imposition, a REIN on freedom." Otherwise, that quote (made famous by Golda Meir) makes absolutely no sense.

PS. Good, succinct article. I wish books still came with disposable little wrappings. Then every one would be like a gift.
Nit
11.09.09
09:42

When I was a kid, I would go to the bookstore with my father. The bookstore's owner would recommend some new book, will wrap it up in a sheet of brown paper. And my father will spend his first day not reading the book but cutting the pages with a knife. There was a ritual to getting a new book. Thank you for this interesting article on book cover.
Jean Francois Rousseau
11.09.09
11:10



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