Dust Jackets

It’s one of those memories from school age that I’m fairly sure happened but not totally. The memory I have is of school books taken home at the beginning of the term and then wrapped in brown paper to protect the cover. Did I put my name or the name of the book on the brown paper. Were they hardbacks? Was cellotape used?

Anyway, that got me to be thinking of Dust Jackets. Before the 1820s, most books were published unbound and were generally sold to customers either in this form, or in simple bindings executed for the bookseller, or in bespoke bindings commissioned by the customer. At this date, publishers did not have their books bound in uniform ‘house’ bindings, so there was no reason for them to issue dust jackets. Book owners did occasionally fashion their own jackets out of leather, wallpaper, fur, or other material, and many other types of detachable protective covers were made for codices, manuscripts, and scrolls from ancient times through the Middle Ages and into the modern period.

The oldest publishers' dust jacket now on record was issued in 1829 on an English annual, Friendship's Offering for 1830. It was discovered at the Bodleian Library in Oxford by Michael Turner, a former curator and Head of Conservation at the Library. Its existence was announced by Oxford in 2009. It is three years older than the previous oldest known jacket, which was discovered in 1934 by the English bookman John Carter on another English annual, The Keepsake for 1833 (issued in 1832).

The earliest known dust jackets of the modern style, with flaps, which covered just the binding and left the text block exposed, date from the 1850s, although this type of jacket was likely in at least limited use some years earlier. This is the jacket that became standard in the publishing industry and is still in use today. Throughout the nineteenth century, nearly all dust jackets were discarded at or soon after purchase. This was a golden age for publishers' decorative bookbinding, and most dust jackets were much plainer than the books.

After 1900, fashion and the economics of publishing caused book bindings to become less decorative, and it was cheaper for publishers to make the jackets more attractive. By around 1920, most of the artwork and decoration had gone from the binding to the dust jacket, and jackets were routinely printed with multiple colours, extensive advertising and blurbs, even the underside of the jacket was now sometimes used for advertising.

As dust jackets became more attractive than the bindings, more people began to keep the jackets on their books, at least until they became soiled, torn, or worn out. One bit of evidence that indicates when jackets became saved objects is the movement of the printed price from the spine of the jacket to a corner of one of the flaps. This also occurred in the 1910s and early 1920s. When jackets were routinely discarded at point of purchase, it did not matter where the price was printed (and many early jackets were not printed with any price), but now if book buyers of the 1910s and 1920s wanted to save the jacket and give a book as a gift, they could clip off the price without ruining the jacket.

Dust jackets from this time were often decorated in art deco styles which are highly prized by collectors. Some of them are worth far more than the books they cover. The most famous example is the jacket on the first edition of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925. Without jacket, the book brings $1,000 or so. With the dust jacket it can bring $20,000 or $30,000 or more, depending on its condition. Other examples of highly prized jackets include those on most of Ernest Hemingway's titles, and the first editions of books such as Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

I’m off now to check my book shelves. I know that I still have this book there from my school days.

The Coral Island

Somewhere in the Java Sea
roughly the size of Sark
with a Lookout Hill
views of smooth beaches
falls of fresh water
forests and pineapples
a call to adventure

Ballantyne’s book
unfurled after fifty years
the dust jacket flagging
but ready aye ready

were there coves
was the temperature
a steady twenty three degrees

no snakes (touch wood)
no sea creatures that sting
which is a reminder
to check for a medicine chest
with plasters and Ventolin

reading glasses
wide brimmed hat
a sort of large cushion
that could double as a mattress
and talking of doubling up

but that’s getting ahead
let’s get past the colour plate
to the first chapter

Roving has always been
and still is my ruling passion

First published in ‘To Have to Follow ’ by Julie Maclean and Terry Quinn. (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2016).

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.