Judging a book by its cover

Throughout our lives, the adage of not judging a book by its cover is constantly re-iterated to us. However, there is perhaps not as much truth in it as we would like to think, particularly (and ironically) in the context of literature. It is certainly apparent that, contrary to the popular stereotype which often casts seventeenth-century writers and publishers as highly austere, lively and detailed front covers were used as much to promote books then as they are today. As we know, an interesting front cover is often one of the first things to draw us to a text (I am of course making the argument here that in seventeenth-century texts the author's name, unlike books today, was in relatively small typeface). The same is clearly true of many seventeenth-century publishers, such as John Marriot, who (among other texts in their publishing oeuvre) produced works intended to be for popular consumption. An attractive frontispiece was a highly effective way of attracting a browser's interest in  locations such as Fleet Street or St Paul's.

Below I have included three such frontispieces that I have come across which stick in my mind as some of the most beautiful: The English Catechisme (1621), The School of the Heart (1674) and my favourite, The Divine Cosmographer (1640). If you want to look any of them up, they are all to be found on EEBO.

© Jenna Townend 2013