Many owners discarded the jackets, preferring to display the bindings of their books instead.Ī fundamental change in attitude occurred in the 1920s. Through the early 20th century, dust jackets were employed to preserve the ornate bindings underneath. While some dust jackets of the 1870s and 1880s did feature printing on the front, back, and flaps, these practices were not standard throughout the industry and were instead specific to each publisher. From plain paper, publishers began printing titles on the spine of the jacket-allowing customers to view a book from the shelf and know its contents without opening it or removing the paper.
He requested that the publisher print the title of his latest book, “The Hunting of the Snark”, on the spine of the “paper wrapper”.Ĭarroll’s letter is evidence of the next stage of dust jacket evolution. A letter from Lewis Carroll to his publisher in 1876 provides insight into how dust jackets were viewed at the time. Featuring flaps, these dust jackets could remain on the book when it was opened, providing protection for volumes even as they were read.īy the 1870s, dust jackets were common, but their marketing value remained unexplored as they were left blank. The modern dust jacket was first introduced in the 1830s. This dust jacket was a rare find indeed as the dust jacket was most often destroyed upon opening, similar to the way a child rips the wrapping paper off their birthday gift therefor very few paper wrapper dust jackets remain. It was a paper wrapper for a gift book, bound in silk, entitled “Friendship’s Offering” (1829). In 2009, the Bodleian Library, Oxford discovered the earliest known example of one of a dust jacket. The first example of a paper covering for books is found in the 1820s when publishers began covering annuals in a sort of wrapping paper, printed with minimal text, enough to identify the volume-these were referred to as “dust jackets”. Thomas Tanselle, an authority on dust jackets, it was likely these slipcases “gave prominence to the idea of a detachable publisher’s covering.” A slipcase is a small box, constructed of board. The earliest version of the dust jacket, first seen in the late 18th century, was a slipcase. The book buyer was responsible for getting the text blocks bound, presumably to match the rest of their library therefore no jacket or cover was supplied. Actually, before 1820, books were sold as unbound gathered pages. Once book jackets were intended simply to protect the valuable bookbinding. The thinking on this has changed dramatically during the evolution of modern trade publishing since the 1900s.
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