200 Years of Pride and Prejudice Covers

February 13, 2013 BookLady Deb3 Comments

Professor Janine Barchas has an article in this weekend’s New York Times on covers for Pride and Prejudice over the past 200 years:

“The 200-Year Jane Austen Book Club“

Let’s just be honest about our superficiality. Even when it comes to the high-minded business of literature, people do judge books by their covers. Perhaps that’s why Amazon produces glossy mock “covers” for its disembodied e-books, to be inspected and decided upon alongside the traditional print offerings.

Book covers may be especially important when it comes to the classics. After all, many of us have a general sense of, if not a thorough familiarity with, the contents within. Perhaps more than anything else, these covers show what matters to prospective buyers. Two centuries of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” are particularly revealing about the novel’s broad and sustained popular reach….

– the article links to a slide-show of twelve covers here – this will be in the print edition on Sunday.

Books · Jane Austen · Jane Austen Popular Culture · Publishing History

Jane Austen’s Persuasion ~ 1960s Style

June 24, 2012 BookLady Deb11 Comments

I am always on the search for old paperbacks of Jane Austen’s works, usually for the introductions by various scholars, but very often for the cover art, always the tell-tale sign of the time of publication. This is one of my favorites, along with the book synopsis inside the front cover – with such a cover and description, one wonders if this is Jane Austen’s Persuasion at all!

Are we in a time-warp here? – whatever is the Captain wearing? and can this Sophia Loren-look-alike really be Anne Elliot?! One is afraid to open the book! but aah!, all is ok – we still find Sir Walter Elliot immersed in his Baronetage on page one … and the note of Mary’s marriage to Charles Musgrove is still there, taking place on December 16, 1810 [anyone ever wonder why Jane Austen had the oft-suffering Mary marry on her birthday?!] It is all there, unabridged, thankfully untouched by 1960s sensibilities…

To go along with this cover, here is the publisher’s blurb:

A WOUNDED LOVE…

Captain Wentworth had no fortune. He had been lucky in his profession, but spending freely what had come freely, had realized nothing. But he was confident he would soon be rich. That he would soon have a ship and soon be on a station that would lead to everything he wanted. He had always been lucky.

Such confidence had been enough for Anne; but Lady Russell saw it differently. In his sanguine temper and fearlessness of mind, she saw but an aggravation of the evil. He was brilliant, he was headstrong. Lady Russell had little taste for wit. She deprecated the connection in every light.

Thus, eight years before, Anne’s heart had been broken.

And now Captain Wentworth had returned.

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Persuasion, by Jane Austen
Magnum Easy Eye Books / Lancer Books, 1968
Cover illustration by Julio Freire

On a side note, completely unrelated to Jane Austen – Freire did a number of book illustrations, but here is one to share – the BOMC edition of Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, a book banned in 14 states upon its publication in 1944 – I don’t think I knew that when I read it in 1972, pregnant with my first-born – I actually gave my daughter “Amber” as a middle name…! – but this a topic far afield of the 1968 cover art for Persuasion … though interesting to me it may well be.

Your thoughts? and what are some of your favorite vintage covers on Austen’s works?

[The Forever Amber cover from CheekyChicago.com ]

@2012 Jane Austen in Vermont

Austen Literary History & Criticism · Jane Austen

Illustrations of the Children in Jane Austen

December 20, 2010December 20, 2010 BookLady Deb6 Comments

In my previous post interviewing David Selwyn on his new book Jane Austen and Children [book review will be posted tomororw], I commented on discovering how many children there actually are in Austen’s novels, and how easy they are to miss. So I started thinking about Austen’s works as published through the years accompanied by the various illustrators. Here are several selections by the Brocks and Hugh Thomson, showing that in each novel there is at least one illustration with children as the subject ~ and how delightful they are!

Northanger Abbey ~ C.E. Brock ~ Catherine at the piano ~ “At eight years old she began…[Vol. I, Ch. I]

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Sense and Sensibility~ C.E. Brock – “ The time may come when Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with” [Vol.I, Ch. II]

Sense and Sensbility ~ C.E. Brock ~ “Why was he to ruin himself and their poor little Harry?” [Vol. I, Ch. II]

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Pride and Prejudice ~ C.E. Brock ~ “On the stairs were a troop of little boys and girls” [Vol. II, Ch. IV]

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Mansfield Park ~ C.E. Brock ~ Fanny on arriving in Mansfield Park ~ ” In vain were the well-meant condescensions of Sir Thomas” [Vol. I, Ch. II]

and the same scene from H.M. Brock:

Mansfield Park ~ C.E. Brock ~ “The kind pains you took to…persuade me out of my fears” [Vol. I, Ch. III]

Mansfield Park ~ Hugh Thomson ~ “Mrs. Price … only discomposed if she saw Rebecca pass by with a flower in her hat.” [Ch. 42]

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Emma ~ Hugh Thomson ~ “With a slice of wedding cake” [Vol. I, Ch. II]

Emma ~ Hugh Thomson “Tosses them up to the ceiling” [Vol. I, Ch. IX]

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Persuasion ~ C.E. Brock ~ Their Grandmamma…humours and indulges them” [Vol. I, Ch.VI]

Persuasion ~ C. E. Brock ~ ‘Brought Home in consequence of a bad fall…’ [Vol. i, Ch. VII]

Persuasion ~ C.E. Brock ‘ In another moment…someone was taking him from her” [Vol. I, Ch. IX]

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Sources: all Brock illustrations are from Mollands; the Hugh Thomson illustrations are from Solitary Elegance. and the Thomson illus of Mrs. Price and children is from Pemberley.com