Printed books tend to be associated with learning and timeless wisdom rather than with worldly concerns of business, marketing and turnover. Might this, in part, explain books are rarely presented with designer packaging? Well, not exactly. The humble book jacket (dust jacket, dust wrapper, dust cover etc) was originally conceived as a selling device, close to advertising in form and purpose.

There is a surprising lack of information about book jackets and collecting such items is often relegated to a class unworthy of the true collector.  There are many detailed, and worthy, studies of book binding but no seminal work on the history of the dust jacket (although it is hoped the that brief bibliography at the end of this article will prove a sound starting place for further reading).  This gap in reference material contrasts sharply with the realities of contemporary book collecting, especially for those interested in modern fiction firsts, where the value of 20th century classics and be increase significantly by the presence of a dust jacket in good or better condition.

The scarcity of surviving jackets, particularly early examples, results from their purpose and the perceptions of the buying public.  Dust jackets were a selling tool, designed to book promote and protect the book inside. Once the book had been purchased and taken home, book buyers were expected to dispose of them.  And many did.  Keeping the dusk jacket was the equivalent of keeping the boxes in which perfume bottles are supplied today.

Dust jackets first appeared in England towards the end of the 19th century, in a culture that had yet to come to adhere to the rules of consumerism.  Many of these early examples the design of the jacket simply reproduced the decoration of the binding which it protected - often tipped-in (ie pasted on) paper illustrations or, from the 1890s onwards, blocking onto cloth bindings.

Only at the beginning of the 20th century did dust jackets begin to become the norm.  A few carried some additional information on the back but there was little in the form of promotional "blurb" and the majority continued simply to reproduce any decoration on the binding. 

In the years just prior to the First World War competition in the book trade increased which resulted in the first wave of designed jackets.   Future poet laureate John Masefield's, Martin Hyde, published in 1910, is typical of this era which a dust jacket printed in a single colour and specifically designed by T C Dugdale.  However, the practice was not widespread and so fragile that the war set back the development of dust jackets by a decade or more.

By the 1920s, branded and packaged goods were becoming more common and printed techniques had developed to a stage where colour and quality could be achieved at a much more reasonable price.  Publishers had the opportunity to develop a recognisable "brand image" as well as to create jackets which would help book buyers identify the genre and style of the book contents. It was an opportunity they exploited to the full, often drawing on the talents of leadings artists and designers of the day both in the UK and the USA.  The distinctive bright yellow typographic dust jackets designed by Stanley Morison for by publishing house Victor Gollancz  and which were used for many years, date from this period.  Continental Europe remained strangely aloof from these developments. French, Italian and German published continued to issue books in plain, if elegant, paper covers.

The launch of Penguin Books by Allen Lane in 1935 revolutionised the book trade. De facto restricted practices within publishing and, up to this point, prevented such cheap production of books but the economic depression of the 1930s led publishers to extreme measures.  Lane's lead meant that eventually, others publishers had to respond.  The restrained Penguin design provided a sharp contrast to the sensationalism of cover design associated with American "dime novels" but even so a degree of snobbery persisted.  In today's world of big business publishing, the distinction between paperbacks and hardbacks still persists but more as a function of marketing than production.  A book with an established visual identity as a hardback will probably keep the same cover in paperback, and most publishers now produce their own paperbacks rather than selling the rights to specialist paperback publishers.

© Jessica Mulley, 2005