With regard to dust jackets, your readers may be interested to see my site - one of the few on the web dedicated to preserving the images of rare dustjackets - www.greatwardustjackets.co.uk. Its shows images of over 1200 jackets on works of World War 1 literature published between 1914 & 1939. I am constantly receiving contributions from other collectors and the site has recently been archived by the British Library.

Kind Regards,

alan hewer

re: Dust Jackets

To the Editor:

I just saw your report about the 1829 dust jacket on the English annual Friendship's Offering for 1830, which was discovered years ago at Oxford. I just wanted to ask if you could mention my website nineteenthcenturydustjackets.com.

I am writing a book called "Nineteenth Century Dust Jackets: An Illustrated History." In March this year, I asked Oxford about the famous 1833 Keepsake jacket that John Carter had discovered in 1934 and subsequently lost when he was showing it at Oxford in 1951. During the course of that enquiry, Oxford told me about the earlier jacket they had found and gave me images of it for my book. The existence of this jacket was first announced on my website in March, where it is posted with much more information.

Your readers may also like to view the 1857 jacket on the Poetical Works of the late Richard S. Gedney, which is also an all-enclosing "sealed wrapping" jacket like the 1829 model - except that the 1857 jacket is still sealed around its book! Many other early jackets are posted there as well.

I am gathering images from institutions, collectors and dealers all over the world. If any of your readers has early or interesting jackets, I'd like to hear from them (bookmarkstore@att.net).

Thank you,

Mark Godburn
The Bookmark
North Canaan, CT

re: Early Dust Jackets

When I was a full-time antiquarian bookseller with the Prince and the Pauper Collectible Children's Books (1988-2000), I was interested in the concept of early dust jackets. Of course with juvenile books, the jackets are often among the first parts to be damaged or lost entirely.

My own collections focus on authors like Jules Verne and books written by Edward Stratemeyer and those produced by his Stratemeyer Syndicate. Among the early Stratemeyer jackets in my collection are:

1898: Estella the Little Cuban Rebel (Street & Smith, 1898) by "Edna Winfield". First and only printing in hardcover.

1902: Malcolm the Waterboy (John Wanamaker, 1900) by "D. T. Henty". Originally published by Mershon. 1902 date is an estimate. Very scarce title in any form, partly because the G. A. Henty collectors also seek it even though it was not written by that famous author. Wanamaker editions for any Stratemeyer titles are scarce. Dust Jackets on any Wanamaker books are almost unknown in collections. Hence, having a Wanamaker of this title in jacket is especially interesting to Stratemeyer collectors.

1908: Rover Boys in the Mountains (Grosset & Dunlap, 1902) by "Arthur M. Winfield". Originally published by Mershon. Reprint from the first year that G&D issued the books with the jacket design replicating the cover that Stratemeyer claimed to design himself.

1909: First at the North Pole (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1909) by "Edward Stratemeyer". Probable first printing. Jacket and book list to Dave Porter and His Classmates (1909).

1913: The Campaign of the Jungle (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1900) by "Edward Stratemeyer". Originally published by Lee & Shepard. Early reprint with the original cover design on the book and jacket. Pre-text list of titles includes Dave Porter and the Runaways (1913).

For Stratemeyer I know from photographic evidence that jackets were issued on the 1897 books issued by W.L. Allison. Not enough copies from Merriam in 1894-1895 survive to know if any of them were issued in dust jackets.

Finding jackets on pre-WWII juveniles can be quite a challenge unless they were from the cheap mass-market publishers (Saalfield, World Syndicate, etc.).

I have handled earlier jackets on books no one has heard of. And this is the basis of one of my complaints about this article. The survival of a jacket depends on many factors but chief among these is how well and often the book was handled.

Jackets for children's books are less common because the kids who read and reread and loaned and traded the books they liked were not always careful in doing so. They say that you only hurt the ones you love. This seems to be especially true for children's books.

In my experience, jackets on modern books (I'll use WWII or later) generally represent 50%-80% of the value of the potential value of a book as you indicated in the article. That means that a copy in a jacket is generally worth double to as much as five times that of a similar-condition copy without a jacket.

Some books won't sell at all to a collector unless the jacket is present and in nice condition. The more recent or more common the book, the higher the baseline standards are among the savvy collectors. For scarce books, those same savvy collectors will be wise to find a book without a jacket until one with a jacket may be located.

However, as with prices of any collectible, the supply and demand factors come into sharp focus. There have to be at least a few people who want something and it has to be somewhat elusive for the value to exceed the intrinsic value of the pile of paper, ink, and cloth (or the retail price of a new reprint, if available).

For that reason, I question your off-hand analogy that because this is presently the earliest known dust jacket that it is somehow the Gutenberg of jackets. For the Gutenberg Bible, the notion is that it is the first major book composed with movable type. It is a significant milestone in the history of printing, publishing, and information transfer.

The first dust jacket might be a milestone in advertising but this is not as strong of a claim. It is interesting that this early example has any printing on it at all. Many of the early jackets I have seen (even from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries) have little or no printing on them at all.

Further, even if this is the earliest jacket or at least the very first one to include advertising (some documentation needed here!) I can see no reason why the value of the jacket on this book has any relation at all to the value of a Gutenberg Bible.

Instead, the value of the jacket is some multiplying factor (perhaps with a bonus for the earliest extant jacket) based on the value of that book in the same condition in the market. I don't recognize the book and perhaps it is valuable in some circles or maybe the reason the jacket survived is that no one read the book :)

Jackets on significant printings of significant books have been discovered in unique or almost unique copies and these tend to be the most valuable compared with the books themselves. The examples which come to mind include The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Moby Dick, an early Sherlock Holmes, etc.

Numerically, one example I can recall is Tarzan of the Apes (A.C. McClurg, 1914). The true first printing in VG condition generally sells for $2,000. A couple copies in VG dust jackets have sold in the $50,000 range. In that case, the jacket represents 98% of the potential value of the book. However, find a jacket on another 1914 A.C. McClurg book not by Burroughs and you might have a very low-value item indeed.

James D. Keeline
http://www.Keeline.com

re: Objects of Desire

Thanks for highlighting "Objects of Desire," one of the best books ever written on collecting, American antiques and a love of the past.

re: Auction Search and Results

Right you are, the auctions are making the market. Love your coverage and love your new searchable base. Keep up the good work.

Susan Halas
Prints Pacific Ltd
Maui, HI

Your website was nicely laid out before.

Why do companies with good websites always change them for the worse?

Rob


Editor's Response:

Rob,

We appreciate your kind words about the former structure of our website. However, your view seems to have been something of a minority. The old site included 25 links on the side and a jumble of features in the middle. Some of these links were important, others of at most minor significance. What we have done is combine these into the 7 main features offered by the site. They can be reached via the side links or the "wheel" on the home page. It is no longer necessary to search through dozens of links to find them. Less important features can be still be reached, but as subsets to the main feature. In other words, everything now follows a logical outline.

We think the site may have seemed fine the way it was because you were used to where to find things. New viewers were mostly confused. In addition, many of our regular visitors and members were only using the site for one or two features, unaware that others existed because of the jumble of confusion.

We are confident that after using the new site a little while, you will soon find it at least as friendly and probably more so than the previous version.

With our best wishes.