Dust Jackets: Meant to Be Tossed?

Here's the latest question that's been nagging at me.

After having spent some time browsing through 20s-50s dust jacket art online, I'm wondering: were dust jackets intended to be kept with the original hardcover, or were they viewed as disposable and quickly discarded? Were they just a bit of brightly-colored marketing material, meant to catch the eye in bookshops?

In period films, shelves of hardcover books are almost always shown without dust jackets. These are all props, of course, but it does make me wonder if that's how people preferred to keep and maintain their libraries.

Anyone know?

(Edited for typos, because I worry about such things)

It was a matter of personal taste. If you carried your books around with you, a dust jacket provided practical protection to the cover of the book, keeping it from getting banged up on the bus or the subway, keeping stains or moisture from marring the binding, and so forth, and it was common to keep the wrapper on the book until it wore out and fell apart. Some jackets, such as those found on Modern Library editions, contained useful information about other available books in the line, and would often be kept as reference catalogues.

People who viewed books as "decor" were more likely to take off the dust jackets because it made it easier to give their shelves a more uniform appearance. Unjacketed books did, however, require more frequent dusting -- the dust collects in the weave of the binding cloth, hence the use of jackets as a way of keeping them clean.

In movies removing the dust jackets had a more practical purpose -- they kept the specific books on the shelves from being distinguishable, and thus prevented them from distracting the viewer's attention away from what they were supposed to be looking at.

I always keep the dust jackets on my own books, and when shopping for used books I always, when the option is available, choose jacketed copies.

Katzenjammer said:

Here's the latest question that's been nagging at me.

After having spent some time browsing through 20s/50s dust jacket art online, I'm wondering: were dust jackets intended to be kept with the original hardcover, or were they viewed as disposable and quickly discarded? Were they just a bit of brightly-colored marketing material, meant to catch the eye in bookshops?

In period films, shelves of hardcover books are almost always shown without dust jackets. These are all props, of course, but it does make me wonder if that's how people preferred to keep and maintain their libraries.

Anyone know?

Click to expand...

While it's possible they were intended as marketing tools (easier and cheaper to produce detailed covers with eye-catching art, synopses, etc.) that could be easily disposed of, they certainly make the book worth more to collectors today. And those very attributes make them more interesting than the plainer hard cover, which if much more than the title, author and publisher may have had a small pictorial detail.

Any book I buy with dust jackets is treasured if it's something I intend on keeping.

I've found that, if one is lucky enough to find a book with a dust jacket from before 1930, it tends to be fairly plain, sometime plainer than the actual covers of the book itself. This could imply that they were intended to protect the covers, rather than being a marketing device.

I don't think it took very long, however, for dust covers to start donning colourful illustrations and titles. It's a lot easier to print thing like that on a dust jacket.

All I really know is that I've gone through an lot of mylar covers. I love the dust jackets.

If you've got a cool 17,500 pounds sterling lying about, check out this 1920 Evelyn Waugh first edition with cover:

http://www.peterharrington.co.uk/rare-books/modern-literature-literature-history/decline-and-fall-5/

What I believe I've read is that 19th Century dust jackets were to protect the book, mainly, until it got into the store or into the customer's hands and were, usually, discarded by the store or customer soon after purchase. The books were nicely decorated and the dust jacket, then, were plainer and served to protect the book.

Then, in the early 20th century, the jacket evolved as publishers discovered it was another way to market the book - so dust jackets became more elaborate. And here's the funny thing - since it is cheaper to make a fancy / decorative dust jacket than a book, eventually, the publishers focused on making fancy dust jackets and plainer books.

The roles didn't quite reverse, but the purpose of the dust jacket evolved from one of mainly protection to one of mainly marketing and cost savings. Hence the jackets became more elaborate as the book's themselves became plainer. That's my from-memory understanding, but I'm happy to be corrected by those who know more.

We take the dust jackets off our books when we put them on the shelves because today's glossy paper creates some harsh reflections when, as we do, you have a lot of books. For that reason, we also think they look better, but we don't have uniform books or particularly "arranged" shelves - other than that we try to keep books of similar topics together. We do keep the dust jackets as it seems wrong to us to throw them away and if any of the books have or might have value one day, having the dust jacket - as noted above - is important.

i think it was more for protection initally as my 30's copies of dickens came with a plan red cardboard box that you slid the book in when not in use and the books themselves are white with red and gold designs on the spine and cover and the one that didnt have the case is more faded/stained on the spine.