JANE AUSTEN COVER TO COVER: 200 Years of Classic Covers

'Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life reading it.' - Northanger Abbey. Since the first publication of her six novels in the 19th century, Jane Austen has never gone out of style and has delighted generations of fans with classic stories that have never changed - and countless book jacket covers that have. This special book compiles two centuries of design showcasing one of the world's most celebrated novelists in over 200 images plus historical commentary, Austen trivia and a little bit of wit. There are facts such as Northanger Abbey's working title was Susan, written 1798-1803, revised 1816, published 1818, 'composed when Jane Austen was in her early twenties, Northanger Abbey is a bridge between the rollicking humour of the stories Jane wrote as a young girl and her more mature work. It is an affectionately comic parody of the gothic and sentimental novels popular in her time as well as a coming-of-age story of the naive but loveable heroine, Catherine Morland.' See the Japanese translation book jacket of Pride and Prejudice from 2010 with the image of a lady with her hair in a neat bun, showing a bit of decolletage as a Regency lady might but in a more woodblock print style with the title translated. There is a 1951 Finnish edition with a watercolour illustration of Captain Wentworth glowering over his shoulder at Anne Elliot; a 1970 Spanish edition of Pride and Prejudice which brings in an iconic black bowler hat of Magritte; and the BBC 1980 mini-series Pride and Prejudice on the cover of a Fontana paperback. Or you might prefer the beautiful MGM Gone with the Wind style front cover, the Penguin Classics Deluxe edition and other timeless classics, some illustrated, some quirky like the ultraviolet Zombie Mayhem classic regency romance series which are still huge sellers, Marvel comics, Daily Telegraph editions, Soho Press and other small press Internet and eBook editions, Bloomsbury Classics, Vintage and Hesperus, Everyman and Modern Library Classics, Reader's Digest, Oxford World Classics, Virago and of course Penguin and Pan or the Brock Lithograph edition from 1892 and George Allen's 1894 truly iconic Peacock Editions featuring the stunning line drawings of Hugh Thomson, one of the most popular illustrators of his time. For all Bibliophiles, this is truly a celebration of books of intrinsic merit from the 19th century right through to modern productions up to 1989. Bibliophile do of course stock the budget priced new Wordsworth Classics also with their own beautiful jacket designs. 224 large pages in glamorous landscape format, hundreds of colour illus.
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