aatw:

Jordan Crane’s amazing cover for Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends

That is absolutely beautiful.

Some of Esquire’s classic covers, from the days when magazines were big enough to hold some great art on the front.

Brilliant pulp 1984 cover from Boing Boing. The cover in itself is beautiful, but this jacket copy is what really makes it sing.

This cover to The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, designed by David Pearson, is probably one of my favorite covers of all time. (Via The Second Pass)

A History of 16 Science Fiction Classics, Told In Book Covers →

io9 shows the varied covers a handful of science fiction classics have borne over the years. (They cheat a little — showing only English editions for some books, while others include foreign editions, which for some reason are much more lurid.) As can be expected, some of the covers are incredibly bad, but mixed in with the pulpy stuff there are some moments of true beauty (and then this,too).

(via booklover, libraryland, and samsaramotel)

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Penguin repackages the classics, including Wuthering Heights, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Tess of the D’Ubervilles, Cranford, Jane Eyre and Sense and Sensibility. Jane Smiley writes:

They are beautiful, they are tactile, covered in cloth with embossed designs. When I invite my friends over, they look at the covers, flip them over, feel the deckle-edged pages, open them to see the typeface. One friend, busy and involved with the newest of new media, at once imagines herself reclining on a brown leather couch and reading “Jane Eyre” (578 pp., $20) at her leisure — 26 ounces, black covers embossed with shiny red leaves, a red ribbon bookmark twinkling from the bottom edge.

(via Jacket Copy)

Terrific cover for a terrific book. A behind-the-scenes look at its creation is here. (via Snarkmarket)

“Hello, ladies. Want to take a torchlight tour with my on the back of my flying housecat? I may even let you snuggle up against my breastplate.”

Man, do I ever love old sci-fi pulp covers.

(Source: libraryland)