Yeoman's in the Fork Blog

The other day we received a book entitled Pictures of Life In Camp and Field by Benjamin F. Taylor. During the Civil War, Taylor covered Chickamauga, the Siege of Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and the early days of the Atlanta Campaign for the Evening Journal in Chicago, Illinois. Our book is a Third Edition of this recollection by Taylor regarding his experience as a journalist during the war. This edition has a date of 1884 and what was interesting to me is, it had a dust jacket. I had not really thought a lot about when books began to be adorned with dust jackets until I saw this one. I had assumed that in the late 1890's and then into the early 1900's, jackets had gradually made their way in use from a past where there was few or none. As a result of having my curiosity piqued, I began to see what I could find out about the early days of dust jackets.

The idea of a dust jacket or book covering can present different standards and differences of opinion when attempting to determine the "first" such use or practice. It is believed that the occasional book covering, made from leather, fur and other materials, were used from ancient times through the Middle Ages and into the more modern period on an individual basis. As books began to be sold on a more widely distributed basis, they went from being unbound sheets where customers might choose to bind them, into paper covered boards and later into cloth covered boards, in the early 1820's. It is difficult to assign definite dates as there is not much in the way of a written record on this subject and most of these coverings were temporarily used. Once a book sold, or when it was displayed in a book store, the coverings were almost always tossed in the trash. The oldest publishers' dust jacket that is known was issued in 1829 on an English annual calledFriendship's Offering for 1830. These early forms of jackets were usually sort of like gift wrapping paper. Thus, just tossed away once the glue or wax was unsealed and the paper removed in order to read the book. The practice gained popularity and it is believed that by the 1880's the flap version of the dust jacket (the modern model) was in wide spread use. This jacket was often rather plain and covered the beautiful decorative book covers, which was popular at the time.

After the golden age of ornate decoration for book covers (1820's to 1900), the economics of the industry trended toward a move to make the dust jacket the decorative aspect of the book. Thus, jackets were kept much more frequently. The example of The Great Gatsby is one of the most famous examples of just how valuable these jackets would become. Published in 1925, Gatsby was in the early days of the new ornate style of dust jacket. It is rare, despite its beauty never-the-less. In 2009 a near mint jacket with first edition book was listed for sale for $500,000.

Today, with the trend toward e-books one hopes that the art and beauty that has for a century accompanied the written word will not disappear. Perhaps art will still be commissioned and sent along with the e-readers. If not, then it is another step in the evolution in the written word. If the art is indeed going to fall by the wayside it would seem to be another unhappy result of the loss of the physical for the ease of the digital.