Dust-Jackets, Dealers, and Documentation

Dust-Jackets, Dealers, and Documentation

In June 1971, I published in The Library an article entitled "Book-Jackets, Blurbs, and Bibliographers" (5th ser., 26: 91-134), which set out to give a brief history of the book-jacket, to recite some of the reasons for the importance of jackets in historical research, and to offer suggestions for recording jackets in descriptive bibliographies. To that account I appended a list of some 260 examples of pre-1901 printed jackets, slip-cases, and other detachable coverings. Now, over three decades later, I should like to add a postscript to the earlier piece, reporting on developments in the study and preservation of dust-jackets^{1 1} in the intervening years and providing a new list of early examples.

When I spoke in 1971 of the "general neglect" of book-jackets, I was aware that some collectors had for decades been willing to pay premiums for books in jackets; I was referring to the fact that many people still regarded them as unworthy of serious bibliographical attention. Most printed ephemera go through a stage of being disregarded and discarded before their historical value is recognized; that book-jackets had not fully emerged from that stage in the early 1970s is suggested by an anecdote John Carter revealed to me. My 1971 article originated as a paper that I delivered before the Bibliographical Society in London on 17 March 1970, during Carter's presidency. He had been pleased when I had proposed that topic in response to his invitation to speak, for he always welcomed any scholarly development in the study of nineteenth-and twentieth-century books. He had long been interested in jackets himself, having located an 1832 example thirty-six years before; and his discussion of jackets in his ABC for Book-Collectors (1952) had been ahead of its time, sketching the history of jackets accurately, mentioning their historically valuable features (such as illustrations and blurbs), and noting that the concept of original condition demands their presence, even when they lack such interesting features. I gave Carter a copy of my paper a few days before the meeting, and his way of expressing his satisfaction with it was to suggest that I had justified his advocacy before the Council of the Bibliographical Society: he sent me a note at my hotel saying that "there were a few sniffs among the stuffier characters when your topic was announced (by me, with enthusiasm), as if such things as dust-jackets were a trifle frivolous—and this should blow them out of the water." Even allowing for a little over-dramatizing of the situation, I have no doubt that Carter's characterization of the Council's attitude was essentially accurate.

I would not wish to claim that no such sniffs would be possible today, but certainly jackets have come to be taken more seriously over the past thirty years, at least by collectors, dealers, bibliographers, rare-book curators, and historians of graphic art, if not always by publishing historians and non-rare-book librarians. Indeed, Brian Alderson has said that the date of my article "may be considered, coincidentally, as the time when disregard [for jackets] began to lessen." ² The points I made thirty years ago are still valid, and what I have to say now will not supersede them. But I can supplement those earlier remarks in three ways: by surveying what has been written about jackets since 1970; by examining the role of dealers in calling attention to jackets and thus assisting in their preservation; and by augmenting my earlier discussion of the kinds of documentation that jackets offer—the information they transmit and the evidence they provide for the history of jackets themselves—supported by an appended list of early examples that incorporates those I have learned about since 1970. ³ In the end, I hope that these comments will encourage further recognition of the various ways in which book-jackets constitute one...