Book Covers

I'd never buy a book just because of its cover, but I have frequently been drawn by an attractive cover to consider a book, to pick it up and browse through it - sometimes encountering an author I know, sometimes discovering one I don't know, but on whom I'm willing to take a flyer. Here are a few good books that grabbed my attention because of their striking covers (click images to enlarge).


Shot in the Dark is a collection of science-fiction mystery stories published by Bantam in 1950. The combination of the alien femme fatale and the man's hand holding a pistol artfully convey the theme of the book.


In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some publishers were lavish in the area of cover design. On the left, is Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, published by J.P Lippincott Company, and on the right, Scott's Kenilworth, published by T.C. and E.C. Jack, of London and Edinburgh.


In the 1920's, Knopf established a separate imprint, known as Borzoi, which, among other things, published Borzoi Pocket Books. These were slender volumes of short stories, novellas and essays, and although the colors of the books varied, the series at one time featured the same cover design, as indicated in the picture above (on the left, W.H. Hudson's Tales of the Pampas; on the right, A Book of Burlesques, by H.L. Mencken).


New York Publisher F.M. Lupton, for some reason, saw fit to enclose The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Tales, by Rudyard Kipling, within boards covered in a curious floral pattern. H.M. Caldwell, of New York and Boston, eschewed gaudy flowers and employed a pretty, but more elegant, floral design in green and gold for its edition of In Black and White, another collection of Kipling's short stories.