A Preview & Cover Reveal of Jane Austen Cover to Cover: 200 Years of Classic Book Covers, by Margaret C. Sullivan

From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: 

I am very pleased to have the ironic honor of officially revealing the cover of a new book about Austen-inspired book covers, Jane Austen: Cover to Cover, by Margaret Sullivan. I think it rather handsome myself. My background in design gives it two big thumbs up to the artist commissioned by Quirk Books and to the author for having the good taste of approving it.

Cover design is a tricky thing that I am quite opinionated about. Over the years there have been many good, bad and down-right ugly Jane Austen book covers and I am so excited to see what Margaret has selected illustrating our favorite author’s novels, nonfiction and more. Here is a brief preview of the book from the publisher and the author.

Congratulations to Margaret.  Jane Austen Cover to Cover: 200 Years of Classic Book Covers releases on 11 November 2014. Pre-orders are available through Quirk Books and many online and brick and mortar booksellers.

DESCRIPTION FROM THE PUBLISHER 

Jane Austen’s six novels are true classics, still immensely popular some 200 years after their first publication.

But although the celebrated stories never change, the covers are always different. Jane Austen Cover to Cover compiles two centuries of design, from elegant Victorian hardcovers and the famed 1894 “Peacock” edition to 1950s pulp, movie tie-in editions, graphic novels, foreign-language translations, and many, many others. Filled with beautiful artwork and insightful commentary, this fascinating and visually intriguing collection is a must for Janeites, design geeks, and book lovers of every stripe.

GUEST BLOG

In the past few years, I’ve become increasingly interested in the aspect of Jane Austen’s life as a professional author. There is ample evidence that Austen took a very pragmatic and careful approach to the business of being an author. She sounds like any modern author, complaining about the slowness of the printers and the business practices of her publishers. When Quirk Books approached me to write Jane Austen Cover to Cover, it was probably my interest in this subject that made me want to write it.

The other reason I wanted to write it was the splendid opportunity to snark funny book covers! I’ve been doing that for years on my blog and among friends online and off, and even had a modest collection of Austen novels with amusing covers. There is certainly a representation of silly covers in the book, but as it developed I was really thrilled to find out how many truly beautiful covers and designs I found, particularly from recent years. Designers are doing some great work for our favorite author.

I’ve read and written extensively on Jane Austen’s novels and the time in which they occur, and Jane Austen Cover to Cover is a different look at the novels–the actual production of the objects that we read. It’s a two-century journey from handmade paper and handset type through everything digital, and the lodestar is the novels themselves–those gorgeous, wonderful stories that never change, and are always there to delight us.

AUTHOR BIO

Margaret C. Sullivan is the founder of AustenBlog.com and the author of The Jane Austen Handbook and There Must Be Murder, and contributed the story “Heard of You” to the anthology Jane Austen Made Me Do It. Her favorite Austen novel is Persuasion. She Tweets as @mcsullivan and hangs out on Facebook. By day she is a web content coordinator for a large international law firm, and by night attempts to convince the world that Henry Tilney really is the best Austen hero.

Jane Austen Cover to Cover: 200 Years of Classic Book Covers, by Margaret C. Sullivan
Quirk Books (11 November 2014), 224 pages
eBook: ASIN: B00KEOF6LU
Hardcover: ISBN: 978-1594747250

Cover image courtesy of Quirk Books © 2014; text Margaret C. Sullivan © 2014, Austenprose.com