Monday, August 08, 2011

In praise of … dust jackets


It's long been a favourite device to cloak some less respectable book in the cover of a much staider one

Pictures of the Labour leader Ed Miliband toting a pile of books acquired for his Devon holiday have occasioned unkind mirth. True, they suggest that he's not the kind of man who in this moment of crisis will be lolling around in Tuscany reading the latest Louise Bagshawe, yet the titles displayed – Leadership on the Line; Prosperity Without Growth; Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy – have marked him out as incurably boring. Yet those who assume they have seen the books he'll be reading may be entirely wrong. What they've seen in fact are the covers – what the trade calls the dust jackets – and it's long been a favourite device to cloak some less respectable book in the cover of a much staider one.

The diligent soul on your train purporting to be engrossed in The Primary Structures of Fabrics: An Illustrated Classification may in fact be secretly savouring the sex life of Fanny Hill. The dust jacket, an institution dating from the early 19th century, is a much more precious and versatile creature than some imagine. Eyecatching covers sell books that would otherwise struggle – which is why, as Private Eye keeps pointing out, so many designs today are so hauntingly similar.
Books with their jackets intact have a far higher resale value than those without. There's a popular cliche, second only perhaps in its category to "all that glisters is not gold", which says that you can't judge a book by its cover. Sound advice at all times; but especially so in cases like this one

No comments: