The enduring popularity of Jane Austen’s novels has seen each one picked up and reissued by numerous publishers over the past 200 years, with every company revising the books’ design and cover. Inevitably technology and contemporary taste influenced their aesthetic decisions, but different approaches to the text itself have also come into play. Having lost ourselves in Margaret C Sullivan’s Jane Austen Cover to Cover, here are the jackets that most caught our eye – with the stories behind them suggesting that while a book might not be best judged by its cover, perhaps its publisher can be.
Thomas Egerton, First Edition of Mansfield Park, 1814
Jane had already received favourable reviews for Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice by the time Mansfield Park was accepted for publication but it was an era in which printing was laborious and expensive and her reputation was not sufficient to command much more than a basic printing. As a result, the original issue of Mansfield Park (on Jane’s insistence) had the thinnest of paper and was given a plain cardboard binding with a paper label on its spine. It was accepted that these wouldn’t wear well but wealthier readers would rebind their copy for the family library.
Chapman and Hall Select Library of Fiction, Sense and Sensibility, 1870
The growth of literacy and the rail network had created new markets for books during the early to mid 19th century and WHSmith were quick to feed demand by stocking cheap, sensationalist stories at railway bookstalls. Alongside these titles were older books whose lack of copyright made them economic options for reprinting. Recognizable for their yellow-glazed paper covers the Chapman and Hall editions were small and affordable, bringing Austen’s work to a wider readership.
George Allen’s ‘Peacock Edition’ of Pride and Prejudice, 1894
Acclaimed for the work he provided for Macmillan’s reissue of Mrs Gaskill’s Cranford, Irish artist Hugh Thomson was commissioned to illustrate George Allen’s edition of Pride and Prejudice. As well as creating black and white drawings of the characters in Regency dress to accompany the text, he drew the elaborate peacock that fills the book’s front cover. While Thomson’s source of inspiration for the latter is disputed, the iconic design made this edition highly desirable and it remains prized among collectors.
Oxford University Press, Persuasion, 1930
Scholarly appreciation of Austen’s work began to emerge in the early 20th century, but in the years since the books were written the many editions they had been through had resulted in the introduction of errors, modernizations and modifications to the texts. On returning from his service in the First World War, Oxford graduate and editor RW Chapman set about creating a definitive collection of the novels. While more recent scholars have been critical of his approach, his text was picked up by Oxford University Press for inclusion in their World Classic’s series and stamped with their motto: Domimina Nustio Illumea.
Paperback Library, Northanger Abbey, 1965
While the demand for student editions was growing, so was the potential for selling Austen to the mass market. The menacing artwork that appeared on the Paperback Library’s edition of Northanger Abbey is overlaid with a declaration of the horrors contained in its pages: ‘The terror of Northanger Abbey had no name, no shape – yet it menaced Catherine Morland in the dead of the night!’ Whether born of a simple desire to capitalize on the market for Gothic tales, or created with tongue in cheek, the design somehow befits Austen’s parody.
Penguin Threads, Emma, 2011
Since the 1980s the tailoring of Austen’s work for different audiences has continued unabated, with covers emphasizing the novels’ romances, characterization, setting, scholarly value or, particularly since the BBC’s 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice, their place in popular culture. Yet new and interesting takes still emerge, with Emma appearing as part of the exquisite Penguin Threads series in 2011. Its hand-embroidered cover image was created by fibre artist Jillian Tamaki and sculpt-embossed to retain the texture of the original stitching – something that Austen, a skilled needlecrafter, would undoubtedly have appreciated.
