Much Ado About Dust Jackets

Isaac Fitzgerald bio ↓  ·  August 27th, 2009  ·  filed under books

A few days ago we highlighted an article about the current trend of books without dust jackets. In her latest column Allison Hoover Bartlett, author of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, takes us past the jacket/no jacket debate and explores dust covers’ surprisingly captivating history.

From their invention for practical use, to the incredible value modern day bibliophiles place on antique jackets (an original can “hike up the value of a collectible book from, say, $3,000 to $180,000″), to the world of counterfeit (yes, counterfeit) covers, Bartlett reveals the “intrigue, ingenuity and controversy” in the world of dust jackets.

Related Posts

  • No related posts...
···
Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and been given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. He has also written for The Bold Italic, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, and The San Francisco Chronicle. He is the managing editor of The Rumpus. Follow him on Twitter. More from this author →

Leave a Reply

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

The Rumpus Blog

newest posts from The Rumpus