The Book Blinders

By: John Clute

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eBook | 1 May 2024

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The first known dust-jacket to appear on a book in the UK dates from 1819.

Sadly, almost none of these jackets have survived. The one institution primarily responsible for this vandalism is the British Library, which removed dust-jackets from every book it accessioned, and destroyed almost all of them. As a result, almost no hardbound book accessioned by the Library after the middle of the nineteenth century was in fact presentable in a visual context: no dust-jacket artwork survived to brighten the theatre of the book; no flap copy to articulate the rituals of expectation and entry that coded successive unveilings of this transgressive literature.

In The Book Blinders, distinguished critic, editor and novelist John Clute looks at 115 books whose jackets have survived out here in the real world. They escaped the burning. Each has a story to tell.